


Don’t Think Twice (It’s Alright)

by Gruoch, seekrest



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Mystery Illness, Peter and his no good very bad day, Spidey Scooby Gang, Tony’s overwhelming guilt complex™️, blood & medical gore, canon nudged to the left, do you expect anything less in a fic for blondsak, don’t call them plucky, it’s just us and our whims now, monster hunting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26698822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gruoch/pseuds/Gruoch, https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest/pseuds/seekrest
Summary: Peter gestures at the inky slime in the bag. “I was hoping you could help me figure out what makes this thing tick, so I know how to handle it next time.”Tony pokes at the goo again, still frowning. This time, it lunges at the screwdriver, squashing itself flat against the plastic of the bag and extruding a corona of spiny, vicious-looking tendrils.Tony straightens up, setting the screwdriver aside. “Yeah, no—I’m gonna have to nix that plan of action now.”Peter blinks at him, taken aback. “What? Why? Mr. Stark—I can’t just let that thing roam around loose in the city.”Tony’s frown deepens, Peter standing up straighter as he stares him down.“Someone could get hurt.”
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 365
Kudos: 244





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blondsak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blondsak/gifts).



> Surprise ;) 
> 
> Happy Birthday blondsak!!! We love you so much and hope you enjoy this fic of your favorite things :)

“You have _got_ to be kidding me.”

“I’m afraid I am not, Peter,” Karen says a bit too cheerfully, Peter grimacing as he just barely swings out of the way.

“What the hell is this thing?” Peter asks, flipping himself off a building as the creature in front of him actually roars - the hair on the back of his neck standing straight up as he lunges, just barely missing what Peter could only describe as a long, syrupy tentacle reaching out for him. 

“I believe it’s extraterrestrial in origin, although without testing I can’t say for sure,” Karen says, Peter doing less defensive measures and more of a tactical retreat - his senses screaming at him as the _actual alien_ advances towards him. 

Peter can feel his heartbeat racing, gooey black mass advancing towards him as the alien shows its teeth. 

“Slippery little sucker aren’t you?” Peter says, laughing to himself at his own joke only to try and dodge yet another lash out. 

“Ha!” Peter says, only for everything in his body to tell him to MOVE - blindsided by the alien’s long tentacles coming at him from the other side, the force of it so strong that it slaps Peter straight out of the air and down to the ground.

Peter thinks he almost blacks out for a second from the force of it, his chest trying and failing to expand as his vision clouds for a second. 

“Karen?” Peter wheezes out, blinking a few times to try and make sense of his surroundings. 

“I am detecting multiple head contusions, Peter. Would you like for me to contact Mr. Stark?” 

“No, no, I’m good,” Peter says, gently testing his fingers and toes as he sits up - only to see the slithery black creature disappear into the sewers. He moves to follow after it only to wince, a sharp pain shooting up and down his leg as he glances towards it. 

It doesn’t _look_ broken but it hurts like hell, enough that Peter decides that whatever problem had slinked down into the sewers was a problem for future Peter as he sits up. 

It’s when he does that he sees it, a glob of the black goo still attached to the suit - looking at it curiously as if it was a dark oil stain. 

“Eugh,” Peter says, trying to shake it away only for it to stubbornly stick to his suit. “Karen, what is this?”

“I am unable to identify the substance, Peter. I would highly recommend--”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Peter says as he makes an attempt to sit up, giving a half-hearted wave to one of the tourists frantically waving at him from the side of the road, “you want me to call Mr. Stark.”

He sends the hand not currently looking like something out of a Jackson Pollack painting out, swinging himself out of the middle of the street and to a nearby rooftop as Karen says, “That would be the most optimal course of action, yes.”

When Peter doesn’t respond, landing quietly on the rooftop and still staring at the goo attached to his arm, Karen says, “Should I plot a course to the Tower, Peter?”

Peter is too engrossed in whatever slinky material the alien was composed of, bringing his other hand towards it only for it to move out of the way - the hair on the back of his neck raising again as he does so. 

His instincts tell him that whatever this is, it’s dangerous - the thought occurring to him that he should have someone check this out. But, Peter thinks, it’s been almost six months since Tony Stark had given him back his suit and for all the promises that he had made then, Mr. Stark hasn’t exactly been any more of a consistent presence in Peter’s life. 

They had weekly lab times and an internship that was made official from some dorky picture that he wished he could redo but they weren’t particularly close. Peter knew he and May talked more often and for that, Peter was glad that this part of his life wasn’t secret anymore.

But Peter was already running late for curfew, not particularly interested in having to explain to May much less Mr. Stark about the actual _alien_ buried somewhere deep in the sewers of New York. 

“No, I need to get home,” Peter says, glancing around the rooftop - pumping his fist at the realization that he’d picked the right one as he jogs over to where his backpack was still webbed up. He carefully slides it open, rummaging around in it till he finds what he’s looking for - the plastic bag that had carried his sandwich from Delmar’s. 

“Peter, my programming says that I cannot override a direct order unless you are in imminent danger. However--”

“Am I actively in danger of dying in the next fifteen minutes?” Peter asks to deflect, knowing Karen will no doubt actually run through the calculations as he carefully wiggles the goo. 

It’s drawn to the plastic, Peter making a face under the mask as it slides away from his suit and into the bag. He closes it just as Karen says, “According to my estimations and pending any collisions on your way home, no.”

“First of all, _rude_. I haven’t hit a building in… three weeks. I thought you were on my side.”

“I am on nobody’s side,” Karen answers diplomatically. 

Peter scowls half from her words and the other from how easily the black goo moved around into the bag, almost like a snake. “Yeah well, we’re not going to the Tower. Not tonight.”

Peter brings the bag up, the goo staying still as his senses nudge at him. He ignores the creeping feeling in his gut, making another disgusted sound as he ties the bag into a knot - carefully placing it back into his backpack before zipping it up and then slinging it over his shoulder. 

“Hey Karen, how fast do you think we can make it home this time around?”

“I thought you were trying _not_ to break your streak of hitting buildings,” Karen replies. Peter snorts as he flexes his fingers - one last injury check before readying himself to go back home. 

“Two for two, you wound me, Karen,” Peter says with a laugh, sending a hand out and swinging his way back home. 

* * *

“Dude, what _is_ that?” Ned whispers, Peter shushing him before motioning for him to come closer. 

He hadn’t initially meant to take the strange goopy mess with him to school, completely forgetting about it when he finally made it home and fell into bed - exhausted from a full day of school, AcaDec practice, and then a long patrol.

So much so that he was late to school, again - half-waving to May as he said goodbye and rushed to class. Peter finally remembered the weird gooey thing when he was digging around in his backpack during lunch. 

Ned had predictably noticed then, the two of them now huddled together at one of the empty desks in their chemistry class - the bell having rung well over thirty minutes ago by now. 

“I don’t know,” Peter says, using a glass pipette to poke at the goo. It’s still nestled in the plastic bag from Delmar’s, Peter making a face as it shifts away from him. “It’s weird though right?”

“Yeah, super weird,” Ned says, plopping down next to him and setting his backpack on the table - the goo vibrating from the movement. 

“Cool,” Ned says in a huff, Peter nodding his head as he says, “Yeah, it’s kind of cute. Even if his dad or whatever tried to kill me.”

“You think this is its baby?” Ned asks, Peter shrugging as he gently pokes at it with the pipette again - the goo being a bit more receptive this time around as some of its little tendrils reach for it. It honestly reminds Peter a little of what it had been like to meet Ned’s baby sister when she was little, tiny fingers reaching for him and grabbing at his thumb. 

The two of them sit together in silence for a moment, Peter playing with the pipette a little until he freezes when he hears, “What are you two doing _now?_ ”

“MJ!” Peter says, quickly turning towards the door at the same time Ned does. 

“You know that touching alien goo without any kind of protective gear is probably really dangerous,” she says, walking up to him with a disapproving look on her face. “Honestly, it’s a miracle for you idiots that the whole school doesn’t know the truth.”

“Technically, we’re not touching it,” Ned says, Peter shooting him a look as Michelle frowns, folding her arms together as she pointedly looks at the pipette Peter is holding. 

The goo has now wrapped itself around the pipette to the point of creeping towards Peter’s fingers. He instinctively lets it go only to watch in disgust as the goo seemingly absorbs the pipette. 

“Ew,” Peter, Michelle, and Ned all say in unison. Michelle shakes her head and says, “Whatever, this is violating like thirty different lab safety practices. Last time you messed with a weird alien thing by yourself you nearly blew us all up in Washington.” 

Peter winces at that, only for Michelle to say, “Don’t you have someone you can call for shit like this?”

Peter realizes the question is directed at him and looks up, seeing Michelle look at him expectantly before saying, “You mean Mr. Stark?”

Michelle just stares at him, Peter smirking before saying, “I thought you didn’t like him.”

“I don’t like that he’s a symptom of capitalistic overreach and by definition, shouldn’t exist considering the massive social inequalities within his own company, _but,_ ” Michelle says, Ned snickering beside him as she continues, “he _has_ helped keep your dumbass alive so he can’t be all bad.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him you said that,” Peter says with a smile.

But Michelle ignores that, her expression shifting to concern as she studies Peter. “You don’t look so good.”

“ _Ouch_?” Peter says, Michelle taking another step forward as she says, “No I mean it, you’re kind of… pale.”

“She’s right,” Ned says while Peter makes a face. “You’ve been spacing out all day.”

“That’s just ‘cause I skipped breakfast and lunch was that weird fish thing,” Peter says, waving a free hand as Michelle just frowns. 

He locks eyes with her, something twisting around in his gut at the look on her face - seeing Ned looking at him out of the corner of his eye before he finally relents. 

“Okay, okay, I’ll take Gooey here to the Tower.”

“You _named_ it?” Michelle asks, her frown turning into a look of disgust as Peter grins. 

“I mean yeah, why not right?”

Michelle rolls her eyes, Peter snickering as Ned nudges him.

“I think Gooey’s cool.”

“Thanks Ned,” Peter says cheerfully, turning back to Michelle with a smile on his face. “At least _someone_ supports me.”

“Whatever, just-- please be careful okay?” Michelle asks, Peter knowing her well enough by now to hear the concern in her voice - the subtle way her eyes glance over him making his cheeks flush as he nods. 

“Of course,” Peter says, “I always am.”

* * *

Peter swings over to the Tower straight from school, briefly stopping behind a nearby dumpster on a side street to throw clothes on over his suit and dig his security badge out of his backpack. He checks on Gooey, as well, pulling the sandwich bag out of an inner pocket in his backpack. The black goo oozes around sluglike inside of its plastic prison, quivering every now and then whenever a car roars by on the busy adjacent street. 

Satisfied, Peter tucks the bag away again and heads over to the Tower, flashing his badge at the stony faced guards manning the front desk before getting into the elevator. There’s one other person riding inside with him, a tall woman who looks at Peter over the rims of her glasses with a studious, evaluating look, like she can’t figure out why he would be there. Peter avoids making eye-contact with her, tugging self-consciously on his sleeves to be sure the cuffs are completely concealing the Spidey suit underneath. He lets out a relieved breath when she gets off a few floors later and the rest of his journey up to Tony’s private lab remains a solo ride.

“Hey, Mr. Stark,” Peter calls loudly above the music blasting from the speaker system as he steps through the lab doors. 

Tony pushes away from the work table he’s seated at and spins around on the swivel stool he’s perched atop. He lifts the face shield of the welding mask he’s wearing and squints at Peter, looking him up and down. “Uh-oh, a surprise visit from the young vigilante...that always gets the old ticker pumping harder. How badly are you bleeding?”

Peter rolls his eyes as he walks over, dumping his backpack on the table and unzipping it. “I’m not hurt, jeez. I need to show you something, but you probably need to cut the music first. I think loud noises kinda scare it.”

Tony frowns, his expression gone wary as he waves a hand to silence the music. “If you’re about to pull out a flea-bitten animal you found in a dumpster and ask me if I can keep it here, the answer is no. Happy gets me a peace lily every year for my birthday, and every year I kill it from neglect within a few weeks. I can’t be trusted with the health and life of a living creature.” 

Peter raises an eyebrow. “Okay, please don’t ever tell May that or she won’t let me do this anymore. And it’s not an animal. I dunno _what_ it is. That’s why I’m here.”

He pulls the sandwich bag out of his backpack and sets it down on the workbench’s metal surface. The black goo inside shudders and twists. 

Tony leans forward to examine it closer, his frown deepening.

“Karen thinks it’s extraterrestrial in origin, and I gotta agree,” Peter says, drumming his fingers on the workbench. 

“Mmm,” Tony hums noncommittally, squinting down at the sample of alien goo. It’s shivering in time to Peter’s drumming. Tony picks up a screwdriver and pokes at it. The goo retreats from his probing, darting around inside the bag. “Where the hell did you find this?”

“I had a run-in with some kinda... _thing_ yesterday morning,” Peter says. “Big guy, with bigger teeth. Not very friendly. _Definitely_ didn’t look like any kind of carbon-based lifeform you’d find here on Earth. _Definitely_ dangerous, too. It knocked me flat and escaped down into the sewers, but it left some of itself on my suit.”

He gestures at the inky slime in the bag. “I was hoping you could help me figure out what makes this thing tick, so when I find my alien guy I know how to handle it so it doesn’t get away again.”

Tony pokes at the goo again, still frowning. This time, it lunges at the screwdriver, squashing itself flat against the plastic of the bag and extruding a corona of spiny, vicious-looking tendrils.

Tony straightens up, setting the screwdriver aside. “Yeah, no—I’m gonna have to nix that plan of action now.”

Peter blinks at him, taken aback. “What? Why? Mr. Stark—I _can’t_ just let that thing roam around loose in the city. Someone could get hurt.”

“You’re not going to let it roam around loose in the city,” Tony says patiently, opening a drawer in the table and tucking the bag with the goo away inside. “You’re gonna sit this one out and let someone with more experience with extraterrestrial baddies deal with it. Trust me, kid—you don’t want to mess with this. If you run across this... _thing_ again, you stay away and call me.”

“Mr. Stark—” Peter starts to protest.

Tony cuts him off. “Look, I’m not gonna change my mind. I don’t have time to argue with you about this, so don’t even try.”

Peter clenches his jaw, a spark of frustrated anger burning hot and painful in his chest. “Okay. Okay, yeah, you’re right—I _should_ let someone with more experience look at it. I’ll take it over to the Baxter Building and have Dr. Richards look at it, since _you_ don’t have the time. He’s always happy to help me.”

Tony makes a sweeping gesture. “Be my guest. If Reed Richards and his merry band of fantastic misfits over there at the Future Foundation want to handle this and deal with any negative fallout that results, he can have at it. I have plenty of other things on my plate.” 

Peter lets out a huff of air, annoyed and a little hurt by this response.

Tony looks at him, his expression softening. “Hey, I’m not trying to punish you. It’s my job to keep you safe, that’s all. I’ve seen firsthand the kind of carnage these intergalactic visitors can deal out. This isn’t about your ability to cope so much as it is mine—I’m just trying to prevent some new grey hairs from sprouting. They’re springing up faster than I can dye them these days. I know what you can and can’t handle.”

 _Do you?_ Peter thinks bitterly. He bites the retort back and swallows it, grabbing his backpack off the table. 

“Okay, well, I’ll just go then,” he mutters, heading towards the exit. “Sorry for bothering you and wasting your time.”

“Oh, come on, kid,” Tony calls after him, but Peter ignores him.

He grabs the handle to the door and pulls it open, stepping through. As he does, he hears a metallic popping sound, and the resistance of the handle gives away under his hand. 

Startled, Peter looks down towards the handle and finds that he’s somehow torn it from the door. It dangles from its socket by a single loose screw. 

A sense of cold unease washes over him. He’d accidentally broken plenty of door handles back when he’d first been bitten and was still getting his new powers under control, but he hasn’t had any incidents like this in close to a year now. 

“Oh, that’s real cute,” Tony says dryly, having noticed the broken handle. “You know, I used to punch holes in the walls at my old man’s house when I got pissed at him, so I get it.” He shakes his head, turning back around to hunch over his work on the table, muttering to himself. “Teenagers...yeesh. Just little bundles of uncontrolled hormones and inexplicable rage.”

Peter wets his lips and clenches his jaw again, scowling at Tony’s back, his apprehension overtaken by another spark of frustration. He releases the handle, letting it hang by its screw. He hikes his backpack up higher on his shoulders and darts down the hall to the privacy of the elevator.

Peter leans back against the wall as the elevator doors slide shut, taking a few deep, steadying breaths. He stares down at his hands for a moment, opening and closing them into fists. 

Peter releases another long breath, rubbing his palms together and frowning.

“Weird,” he murmurs to his reflection in the mirrored wall.

* * *

It turns out Tony’s caution is overblown, anyway—Peter doesn’t have any other run-ins with the big alien goo dude over the course of the next couple of weeks. The creature seems to have disappeared as mysteriously as it had arrived, and there’s plenty of other criminal activity around the city to keep Peter busy.

Too busy, maybe. 

Peter hunches over his textbook during his free study period, trying to cram for an APUSH exam he has later in the afternoon. But the paragraphs dryly outlining the Bay of Pigs Invasion seem to warp and shift before his eyes, and he can’t keep track of what he’s reading. There’s a pulsing ache in his temples and along the back of his neck that he gets whenever he’s had too many late nights in a row, and his ability to concentrate has dwindled to nothing.

“Peter...Peter...Peeeeeeter....hello?”

A hand waves in front of Peter’s face. He straightens up, blinking.

Ned stands in front of him, wearing a concerned expression.

“You okay?” Ned asks. “You were like, spacing out _hard_.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Peter replies, scrubbing at his dry eyes with his fists. “Just need to catch up on some sleep, I guess.”

Ned frowns at him. “You sure you’re good? You sorta look like shit, dude.”

“Wow, thanks, Ned,” Peter says drolly. “And I’m fine, really.”

Ned doesn’t look convinced, but he lets it go, jerking his head towards the classroom’s door. “The bell rang. We gotta go or we’re gonna be late.”

“Yeah, okay,” Peter replies, gathering up his textbooks.

He and Ned join the dense crowd of students flowing through the hallway on their way to their next class. Peter grimaces as he trudges along beside Ned, squinting against the bright fluorescent lighting overhead. The general din of conversations and laughter and slammed locker doors that always accompanies these passing periods seems to have become an overwhelming cacophony, and the ache between Peter’s temples morphs into a stabbing throb.

“Hey, I finally got the replacement pin connector for the Nintendo Sixty-Four you dug out of that dumpster,” Ned is saying. “It’s working great now. You need to come over soon so I can obliterate your ass at MarioKart.”

Peter snorts. “You’re talking mad shit for a guy who’s never—”

A strange buzzing in Peter’s ears cuts him off. A wave of dizziness passes over him so suddenly and so strongly that he feels like the hallway is violently tipping, the floor surging up under his feet. He stumbles and falls to his knees, putting out a hand to catch himself against the row of lockers, his armful of books spilling across the floor.

“Peter!” he hears Ned call distantly. “Peter, are you alright?”

“Whoa,” Peter says dumbly, swallowing down the nausea rising in his throat as the hallway continues to spin lazily before his eyes. He blinks a few times and the dizziness fades as quickly as it came.

Ned is crouched in front of him, his expression worried once more. “Dude, are you okay? You’re super pale.”

“Yeah,” Peter says shakily, swallowing again. His ears are still faintly buzzing. “I just got dizzy for a second. Probably just need to eat something.”

He looks around. Students have stopped to stare at him, some looking concerned or curious and others laughing. Peter flushes with embarrassment. He tries to reach for his dropped books, but the hand he has pressed to the locker stays stuck to its surface.

He looks at his hand, frowning, and pulls again. The metal of the locker bows outward, stuck fast to his palm. Peter feels his stomach turn over. 

“What the hell?” he breathes out. He tugs again, fruitlessly.

“Peter, come on, we’re gonna be late,” Ned says, starting to pick up Peter’s books for him.

“I can’t let go,” Peter tells him in a hushed voice.

Ned frowns at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I _can’t_ let go of the locker.” Peter can feel people’s eyes on him and panic starts to creep up his spine. “My hand is stuck. I can’t let go.”

He yanks on it again, and this time the metal door of the locker creases and folds.

Ned grabs Peter’s arm and comes around to stand in front of Peter and block him from view. “Holy shit! Okay, okay just—don’t freak out.”

“Ned, please—help me,” Peter begs, feeling sick and shaky all over.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Ned says, looking just as panicked as Peter feels. “Okay, okay—how do you usually stop sticking to stuff?”

“I dunno, I just _do,_ “ Peter hisses back, pulling at his hand again. He feels like he has to puke.

Ned’s grasp tightens on Peter’s arm. “Quit yanking on it—if you rip the door off you’re just gonna draw more attention to yourself. Try to relax.”

“ _How_ am I supposed to relax?” Peter bites back, still tugging. He feels like every pair of eyes in the entire school is on him.

“What are you nerds doing now?”

Peter looks over his shoulder. Michelle is walking towards them, her eyebrows raised questioningly. 

“Peter’s stuck to the locker,” Ned tells her in a low voice.

Michelle’s eyebrows climb even higher. “Yeah, he’s sticky.”

“I can’t _unstick._ I don’t know what’s happening,” Peter clarifies, looking up at her with a pleading expression. He can feel cold sweat plastering his shirt to his skin between his shoulder blades.

“Shit,” Michelle says, blinking. She looks around at the crowded hallway, her lips pressed into a thin, determined line. “Okay...don’t panic. I’m gonna create a distraction for you.”

“What are you gonna do?” Ned asks, but Michelle is already weaving her way through the packed hallway.

A moment later, the fire alarms start blaring. Peter practically jumps out of his skin, and the shock must do the trick because his hand releases from the locker so suddenly that he falls backwards on his ass. Ned grabs his arm and yanks him up to his feet, and the two of them join the rest of the students and faculty streaming towards the exits while the alarms continue to shrilly ring.

Outside, Michelle finds them again, pushing past throngs of chattering students.

“So that worked,” she says, looking Peter up and down.

“Yeah, thanks,” Peter says a little breathlessly, adrenaline still humming in his veins. “Seriously...I really appreciate it. You could get in a _lot_ of trouble if they find out you pulled the fire alarm.”

Michelle shrugs. “I could, but I won’t. No one ever really notices me. It’s kinda like my own little superpower.”

She offers him a small, tight-lipped smile, almost shyly, tilting her head and brushing a strand of hair back from her face. Peter feels his stomach do another weird flip-flop thing, only this time it’s pleasant and warm.

“Dude, what _was_ that?” Ned pipes up. He’s looking a little pale now himself, his brows knit together in concern.

Peter twitches a shoulder, shaking his head and smiling weakly. “Yeah, that was...strange. I dunno. I’m probably just tired. Stress or whatever…I’m okay now.”

Ned and Michelle exchange dubious looks, but before they can press him further, Principal Morita climbs up the steps in front of the school building and starts waving his arms to get everyone’s attention.

“False alarm, folks,” he calls out. “Everyone back inside. Class will proceed as normal.”

Peter sighs in relief, joining the pack of students climbing up the stairs. He flexes his fingers a few times as he walks down the hallway towards his next class before shoving his hands into his pockets, trying to ignore the concerned glances Michelle and Ned keep shooting his way.


	2. Chapter 2

“Pete?”

“Huh?” Peter asks, turning to May and seeing the frown on her face. 

It’s been almost three weeks since the locker incident and despite all his claims to the contrary, neither Ned nor Michelle had let up in thinking that something was seriously wrong. 

Sure, Peter felt a little chilly but that was to be expected since it was September and a cold front was approaching New York. He’s had a shitty sleeping schedule for years and the long patrols he’s been putting in, trying to find Gooey’s dad and coming up with nothing, hasn't helped any. 

It also didn’t help that he had midterms, junior year proving to be the kind of hell the upperclassmen had always warned them about. Peter rubs a hand over his face, May’s frown deepening as he says, “Sorry, May, what’s up?”

“I said that you’re looking a little peaky,” she says, Peter watching as the line in the middle of her forehead that only ever showed up when she was worried began to form. “Are you sure you’re up to going out tonight?”

“May--” Peter sighs, going to argue only for May to gently rest her hand over his. The argument dies in his throat, seeing the concern in her eyes as she says, “You’ve been looking a little rough the past few days. I know everything’s been tough with midterms. Maybe it’s time Spider-Man takes a little vacation until everything’s settled?” 

“I’m fine, May. I promise,” Peter says, while May looks as if she doesn’t believe him. “It’s just stress.”

She moves her hand so that it’s resting against his forehead, Peter making a face as she says, “Doesn’t look like stress. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you have a low-grade fever.”

“I’m  _ fine _ May, you know I don’t get sick anymore,” Peter says.

May moves her hand so that it’s cradling his chin - forcing him to look at her. She searches his face, Peter watching as she seems to look for the lie - a pang running through him that this would be her first reaction even if he knows it’s not unwarranted considering how the first few months of Spider-Man began. 

She seems to find what she’s looking for but the firmness in her expression doesn’t change, releasing his chin before saying, “I still want you home by ten tonight.”

“May--”

“Ten or not at all. New York won’t have a dropout for a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, okay?” Her tone is teasing but Peter can feel the certainty in it - knowing from nearly a lifetime of living with her that this is not going to be something he can successfully argue against. 

“Okay,” he says. 

May gives him a tight smile before motioning towards his food. “And make sure you eat all those cauliflower.”

Peter makes a face, poking at it with his chopstick. “Do I have to?”

May just looks at him over her glasses, Peter smirking at her before poking at the cauliflower in the same way he used to as a kid - eliciting the intended reaction when May laughs. 

“I’m taking Penelope’s shift tonight so you’ll have to text me when you get home. And,” she points a chopstick at him, Peter holding back a laugh for how seriously she’s staring at him, “don’t think I won’t know if you’re late.” 

“I won’t be,” Peter says.

May eyes him up and down before cracking a smile. 

“Good. Now, stop trying to distract me.” She looks pointedly towards the cauliflower on his plate. “Eat up.”

Peter laughs, shaking his head and maneuvering his chopsticks to do so, May smiling at him fondly as he does. 

* * *

The cauliflower is sitting like a rock in his stomach an hour later, Peter groaning to himself as he subconsciously runs a hand over it. 

“Vegetables shouldn’t be  _ white _ . Where did cauliflower even come from?”

“Cauliflower is derived from the Latin word  _ cavolfiore  _ meaning cabbage flower and is said to have been cultivated by Pliny the Elder, a philosopher in Ancient Rome,” Karen cheerfully replies, Peter laughing as he sends another web out. 

“That’s-- okay, well I didn’t mean that literally but that’s cool I guess. I didn’t know you knew that much about vegetables, Karen.”

“I have access to every publicly available search engine and thus know everything, Peter,” she says, Peter thinking the sarcasm in her coding was completely unnecessary. “Would you like to know more vegetable facts?

“You know, I think I’m good for now but thanks. I’ll keep that in mind when I’m-- oh what’s that?” Peter says, quickly changing gears when he swings past an alleyway. 

He flips around, sending a web out to swing to where the alley way is and crouching against the building wall as he looks on. 

There are a few guys in ski masks exchanging something out of a dark blue sedan, Karen maximizing the view from where he is as he listens in. 

“You telling me Anthony is okay with this?” one guy asks, Peter slowly creeping along the building towards where they’re situated. 

“What Anthony don’t know won’t hurt him,” another replies.

Peter inches a few feet closer, only for his senses to start immediately screaming at him out of nowhere. 

“What the--” Peter says, his fingers suddenly losing his sticky grip as he falls - the three guys turning to him in shock and yelling out, “Spider-Man!”

Peter’s able to just avoid cracking his head open on the pavement below, frantically sending a web out to swing towards the guys - kicking one towards the other side of the alleyway. 

He’s knocked out instantly, Peter hearing his heartbeat as he lets go of the web and turns to the other two guys - his senses still going wild as he tries to gauge what the threat is and where it’s coming from. 

One guy comes straight for him, Peter easily flipping over him and grabbing the arm that he sent out as a punch - the momentum knocking the wind out of the guy as he webs him down. The feeling of terror is still pressing on Peter, the usual itch on the back of his neck transforming into full scale panic as his vision warps. 

_ What the hell?  _ Peter barely finishes his thought when he hears it and then immediately feels it, the last guy left standing shooting a gun straight at him. 

Peter dodges but not well enough, the bullet slicing his shoulder. He cries out in pain - getting control of himself and sending out another web, throwing the guy back and pinning him against the other wall. 

The threat averted, Peter winces as he gingerly touches his shoulder and looks to see blood staining the suit fingers a darker shade than they are normally.

“You’ll be sorry, Spider-Man. You’re not--” the man who shot him starts. Peter shuts him up by sending out one final web towards the guy’s mouth, only to groan again at the pressure this puts on his shoulder. 

_ “Ouch,  _ that was… super not cool dude. Shit,” Peter says, hearing the waver in his own voice as Karen unhelpfully chimes, “Would you like me to contact the police, Peter?”

“Yeah, yeah--” Peter hisses, walking out of the alley the same way he came, “and show me the quickest way home?”

Karen takes a second to complete his request, Peter groaning again as he tries to adjust his shoulder - the pain coming from his gunshot wound hurting much worse than it should considering it was only a graze. He still feels disoriented, like the world is shifting a little too much - every step he takes feeling like his skull is vibrating. 

“I would strongly recommend plotting a course to the Tower, Peter.”

“Did you call the cops?” Peter asks through gritted teeth, adjusting his free hand to send a web towards the gunshot wound - only to clench his jaw so tightly that it hurts when it makes impact.

“I have but I must insist, Peter,” Karen says, sounding almost apologetic. “In the event of gunshot or stab wounds, you are required to seek medical attention. If you do not act within three minutes, I will be required to contact Tony Stark.” 

The thought of Mr. Stark seeing him like this - especially considering the  _ last _ time he’d seen him a few weeks back - twists his stomach into knots even more than the cauliflower does. 

“I’m acting, I’m going home--” Peter says, only to gasp as he takes another step, ignoring the pain as he sends a web out with his free hand.   


“Peter, my protocol dictates that you are no longer permitted to administer medical care to yourself. You now have two minutes and forty-two seconds to direct your course to the Tower.” 

Peter hisses in pain as he’s propelled into the air, mind racing as he tries to figure a way out of what would end up being a particularly mortifying encounter considering the radio silence Mr. Stark had given him the past few weeks. 

He already felt a little like a burden - the idea of Peter seeing the man for the first time in weeks being because he’s bleeding not being his highest priority. 

Going home was out of the question - May was already at work and even if she wasn’t, Peter especially didn’t want to worry  _ her. _ Both Ned and MJ had helped him out in the past few months but - Peter thinks as he winces, landing on a lightpost nearby - Ned would actually have a change of clothes waiting for him, leftovers from the last time he spent the night. 

For as close as he and Michelle had gotten in the past few months, Peter’s ears burned at the idea of stripping down to his underwear in front of her just yet. 

_ “Fine, _ ouch. Karen, can you tell me the quickest way to Ned’s?” 

Karen pauses, Peter gingerly pressing a hand to his shoulder once again when she says, “Peter, I must insist that you seek medical attention with--”

“Ned’s mom is a doctor and they have medical shit there,” Peter gasps out, pressing his hand firmly against where the web is at. His webs are strong enough that they stop the bleeding, but the insane amount of pain he’s feeling is weird even for him, hoping the added pressure will help his body snap back into overdrive. 

Time starts to lose meaning for a second as Peter’s vision goes spotty. “Please Karen.”

A beat. “Calculating.” 

Peter can guess that she’s attempting to figure a way out of the loophole Peter is currently exploiting but he doesn’t care - his senses still going haywire and the pain from his shoulder threatening to make him black out as he does. 

It doesn’t make sense in Peter’s frazzled mind. He’d once swung home with a knife in his gut without passing out, no doubt the reason for Mr. Stark’s wildly overprotective new protocol set in place. 

Peter’s too concerned about falling down to his death because of the pain as he waits for Karen’s directions, gritting his teeth once more and forcing himself to focus on getting himself there in one piece. 

* * *

“Dude,” Ned says, Peter gritting his teeth as Ned finishes taping up the bandage. “You sure you’re good, Pete? We can always--”

“I’m fine, Ned,” Peter snaps, Ned going quiet as he finishes what he’s doing. Peter’s shoulder still stings, a creeping sense of dread forming in the back of his mind as he wonders why. He shoves it away, sighing as he shoots an apologetic look to Ned, who wordlessly offers him the change of clothes he always keeps at his place.

“Sorry, sorry just-- rough night,” Peter says as he takes the clothes, awkwardly putting them on. Ned says nothing, Peter glancing up to him as he sits on his bed.

“You know you can talk to me about anything, right?” Ned asks.

Peter puts the sweatshirt on over his head, pulling his head through the neckhole and staring in confusion at Ned. “Yeah? What--”

“It’s just you’ve uh, you’ve been acting kind of weird lately,” Ned says, twiddling his thumbs in the way Peter immediately recognizes as the thing he does when he’s nervous. “I’ve noticed, MJ noticed which,” he shrugs, “she notices everything, but still.”

“I don’t… are you guys talking about me?” Peter asks, the nausea from the cauliflower he’d eaten for dinner coming back in full force. He swallows it down. 

Ned frowns as he says, “No we’re just-- you’ve just been looking…  _ bad _ .”

“Thanks,” Peter deadpans, running a hand over his face and regretting the action as soon as he does it for how it jostles his shoulder.

“I don’t mean it like that, dude. You got shot tonight and you’ve honestly looked like shit the past few weeks. I’m just--”

“Ned, I’m fine.” Peter sighs, bringing his hand down and seeing the hurt expression on Ned’s face - the look of it making Peter feel even shittier than he already does as he says, “I’m sorry. I feel like shit. Getting shot isn’t what it used to be.”

The joke falls flat, Ned’s frown just deepening as he says, “Pete, if you want to go home we can just--”

“No,” Peter quickly says, already anticipating that whatever hovering Ned is doing right now would just exponentially increase if he went home and May even got a  _ hint _ that he wasn’t feeling well. She’d been thrilled that he cut his patrolling down to go hang out with Ned when he texted her, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach not just at lying to her but at what would happen if she found out why. 

He looks back to Ned, guessing from Ned’s expression that he probably looked about as good as he feels. “No, I’m good. But can we just play some Mario Kart or something?”

Ned looks unconvinced, his hands wringing together as Peter whispers, “Please?”

There must be something desperate enough in Peter’s expression that it causes Ned to relent, nodding again as he goes to set up the game console. 

Yet just as Peter’s sitting down on the floor in his usual spot as Ned boots up the gaming system - Peter’s vision begins to warp just like it had in the alleyway, the itch in the back of his neck crawling up and down his spine. 

It’s all consuming, the threat of wanting to throw up and the creeping sense of dread building as his vision continues to distort - the game music in the background mixing in with Ned’s voice. 

“I know you like Yoshi but-- wait, Pete? You okay?”

Peter tries to open his mouth but finds he can’t, his hands tingling like he was being poked by a thousand different needles and his vision going black as Ned’s voice raises. 

Whatever Ned says, Peter doesn’t hear it - a white-hot and blinding pain assaulting all of his senses until he feels nothing at all. 


	3. Chapter 3

“Fri, give me a little more light, would you?” Tony murmurs, squinting at the tangle of wires on the table in front of him. 

He’s elbow-deep in the latest War Machine model he’s been working on for the past several weeks in his private lab in the Tower—the building he had sold months ago and then immediately repurchased at a significant loss, much to Pepper’s exasperation. He’d told her it was a matter of pride that made him change his mind—the Future Foundation had just taken up residence in the Baxter Building, and Tony would eat his own foot before he’d stand to let that arrogant prick Reed Richards own a taller building in Manhattan than him. Pepper had rolled her eyes and made a droll remark about Tony compensating for something, but left it at that.

Tony  _ was _ half-serious about the building height issue being a deciding factor for his repurchase, among other reasons, but the thing that had really tipped the scales for him was the kid crashing Tony’s plane full of billions of dollars worth of highly advanced and extremely dangerous technology into Coney Island. It had occurred to Tony, days later when he’d arrived to personally survey the carnage across the beach, that maybe giving a fifteen-year-old child a sophisticated combat suit and then setting him free upon the streets of New York City with a very loose leash had not, admittedly, been one of his wiser moves. He’d had the very sobering realization while examining the smoldering remains of his downed plane that he had— _ perhaps— _ severely underestimated the kid’s talent for getting into serious trouble, and that maybe putting even more distance between himself and his young, inexperienced mentee was not, in fact, a good idea.

It’s a decision that proves itself wise when FRIDAY suddenly cuts the music blasting through the lab.

“Incoming call from May Parker,” the A.I. announces. 

Tony grimaces. His conversations with May Parker are rarely pleasant, but a quick glance at his monitor lets him know that Peter is not currently in the suit, which does a lot to calm Tony’s nerves.

“Patch her through.”

“Tony?” May isn’t screaming, which is another good sign.

“You got him,” Tony says with as much pleasantness as he can muster. He works a screwdriver under a panel on the armor and pulls it up.

“Are you in the city?”

The question makes Tony pause, as does May’s tone. She’s calm, but there is a faintly desperate edge to her voice that has Tony back on alert.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” Tony says slowly. “What’s the trouble?” Because of course there had to be trouble.

“Oh, thank god,” May breathes, almost to herself. “I need a favor.”

“Okay,” Tony says warily. “Shoot.”

“I need you to go to the emergency room in Flushing. Ned’s mother just called me—something’s happened to Peter,” May says, her voice breaking slightly.

Tony is already up out of his chair and jogging down the hall. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, I don’t—they had to call an ambulance. She thinks he had a seizure,” May tells him, a note of panic entering her voice now. “He was with Ned, I don’t even know what—I’m at work, I don’t have my car with me...I called a taxi, but—”

“I’m gonna send Happy to get you,” Tony says, typing a message to Happy as he speaks. “And I’m headed to the hospital now.”

“Thank you, oh god, thank you,” May says tearfully. “I wouldn’t ask, but you have power of attorney and you know about—about him, how he’s... _ different. _ You know what to tell them so they can take care of him right.”

“May, it’s alright. These are the sorts of things I expect you to call me for.”

“Thank you,” May says again.

“Just hang in there, alright? Happy’s on his way. I’ll call you when I get to the hospital and figure out what’s going on.”

Tony is halfway down the elevator to the garage when he realizes he isn’t wearing shoes. He swears and has FRIDAY send the damn thing back up again, drumming his fingers impatiently against his thigh.

“FRIDAY, call Ned Leeds,” he orders slightly out of breath once he’s appropriately garbed and headed back down to the garage. The phone rings and rings and Tony is just about to end the call when it’s answered.

“Hello?” a voice asks.

“Ned? It’s your old pal, Tony Stark.”

There’s a long pause on the other end. Then, “Holy shit!”

“Yep,” Tony says grimly as the elevator doors open and he sprints to the nearest car.

“Oh my god, you’re calling about Peter,” Ned says in a rush.

“Right again, champ,” Tony says, peeling out of the garage and ignoring the angry honking as he cuts into traffic. “I need the low down on our boy Pete. May says something happened while he was in your company.”

“Mr. Stark, sir, I don’t even know—we were just hanging out and he seemed really out of it and then he just—he just— _ passed out,” _ the boy babbles. “He fell over and he was shaking all over, and god, it was so scary. My mom called an ambulance and she rode with him to the hospital.”

“Okay, that was a lot of words and very little information,” Tony says, gripping the wheel a little tighter. “Slow down and let’s try again. What were you two doing before he passed out?”

“We were playing Mario Kart—the old school version on the Sixty-Four.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” Tony says, weaving in and out of traffic. He’s wondering if he should have put a suit on and flown over to the hospital, but he isn’t comfortable with the idea of drawing too much press attention with his presence.

“It’s a videogame, sir.”

Tony clears his throat, blowing through a red light. “Ned, we’re buddies, right? You know you can tell me anything, no judgement, no shame…”

“I—yes?”

“And you know lying to Iron Man is a  _ grievous _ crime,” Tony continues, cutting off a bus. “So you’ll answer me truthfully—were you guys... _ experimenting _ with any illicit controlled substances tonight?”

There’s spluttering on the other end of the line, before Ned’s stammering response comes across. “No! Mr. Stark, sir—we would  _ never— _ I mean, I don’t even know where to buy  _ weed, _ and Peter would tell me if he was doing anything like that, which he  _ definitely _ isn’t—”

“Okay, okay, okay, I believe you, relax, buddy. I had to ask, that’s all,” Tony says, feeling a little disappointed that the answer to Peter’s issues wouldn’t be as simple as  _ dumbass teenagers being dumbasses.  _ “Can you give me anything else?”

There’s a pause before Ned answers. “Uh...yeah, yeah, he got shot in the shoulder before he came over—but it wasn’t bad like  _ that,  _ I mean, it was just like a graze.”

Tony frowns, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. He’s learned by now that a  _ graze _ could mean anything from a superficial scrape to a four-inch-long gash that requires extensive stitching to close. But he has alerts in place that would notify him in the event of something actually life-threatening happening, which makes him think in this case Ned is being accurate.

“Alright, buddy, thanks for the help,” Tony says, swallowing down his disappointment that he’s failed to glean anything truly useful from this conversation.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Ned says earnestly. “Just—can you tell Peter I hope he’s doing okay?” 

“I’ll do that,” Tony promises, before ending the call. He taps his fingers over the leather of the steering wheel, wondering how many more grey hairs he’s going to get over the course of this night.

* * *

The motley crew of the ill and injured filling the waiting room at the ER in Flushing don’t bat an eye at Tony as he walks over to see the triage nurse, too preoccupied with their own miseries to notice the celebrity in their midst.  _ Small blessings, _ Tony grimly thinks, handing his ID and all the necessary legal paperwork over to the nurse. She has enough sense to immediately take him down a hallway to a private family consultation room, where Tony is joined by Peter’s physician, who has a reassuringly blunt, no-nonsense attitude. 

But when it comes to a diagnosis, she offers Tony what amounts to a head scratch and a shrug. Peter’s lab work and CT scan have all come back clean-as-a-whistle. Red blood cell count, white blood cell count, platelets, blood pressure, a laundry list of other tests—all returned normal. But it’s clear  _ something _ isn’t right with him. 

“He has an elevated temperature that’s not responding to medication,” the doctor continues. She pauses a moment, looking at Tony over the rims of her glasses. There is something vaguely disapproving in her gaze that has Tony fighting back the urge to squirm. 

“It would be helpful if you could provide more information about his enhancements,” she says finally.

Tony does squirm a little now, leaning back in his chair and crossing an ankle over his knee. He returns her look through the violet-shaded lenses of his glasses, his leg bouncing. 

“Enhancements?” he repeats innocently.

The doctor takes a breath, folding her hands together on top of the desk separating her and Tony.

“He had another seizure in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Nearly broke a paramedic’s arm, crushed the metal railing on the stretcher like it was tinfoil,” she says. “Do you know many teenagers who can do something like that?”

Tony puffs out his cheeks as he blows out a long breath, tilting his chair back on two legs. “Well. I might know one or two.”

“I’m sure you do, Mr. Stark,” the doctor drolly replies. “And I’m sure you know I take patient confidentiality very seriously.”

Tony lets his chair drop back down. He plants his elbows on the desk, leaning forward. “Alright. You seem on the level. Let’s talk where we go from here, and then I want to see the kid.”

* * *

Peter is lying on a battered gurney separated from his fellow unfortunate patients by thin cloth curtains when Tony finally gets to see him. Peter doesn’t smile or say anything when Tony comes to his bedside, which would be enough to clue Tony into the fact that Peter must be feeling seriously unwell even if the kid didn’t look like absolute shit, too. He’s as white as a ghost and he blinks up at Tony through glassy, red-rimmed eyes, one arm full of IV tubes. He’s accompanied by a short, round-faced little woman who fixes Tony with the same disapproving look the doctor had.

Tony gives her his most charming smile. “You must be Mrs. Leeds. I’ve spoken to your son a few times. Sharp young man. I’ve got a job waiting for him at Stark Industries.”

He extends a hand to her to shake, but she doesn’t take it, narrowing her eyes at him. 

“It’s  _ Doctor _ Leeds,” she says. “Where is May?”

“On her way here,” Tony says smoothly, clasping his hands behind himself and rocking back on his heels. He genuinely thinks he’d rather do battle with an enraged Hulk again than face another irate maternal figure. 

“We’re friends,” he adds a little helplessly when Dr. Leeds continues to eye him with suspicion.

“Hm,” she hums skeptically.

Tony clears his throat. “Anyway...I know she really appreciates you taking care of her nephew, but I can handle things from here.”

Dr. Leeds gathers herself up to her full, negligent height, somehow managing to still look imposing despite being a good six-inches shorter than Tony, making up for her lack in physicality with sheer force of will. 

“I’ll wait for May,” she announces firmly. 

Peter stirs on the gurney, coming to Tony’s rescue.

“You don’t have to stay, Dr. Leeds,” he mumbles at her. “I’m good now, seriously. I’d really appreciate it if you’d go home and tell Ned everything is fine. I think I probably scared him.”

Ned’s mother hesitates a moment, looking between him and Tony, and then she reluctantly collects her handbag. She leans over Peter and fusses over him for a moment, petting his hair and pressing a kiss to his pale cheek, before straightening up. She gives Tony one last hard look before departing.

“Well, kid,” Tony says once he and Peter are alone, perching delicately on the edge of the gurney and trying to touch as little of any germy hospital surfaces as physically possible. “This has got to be the most pathetic you’ve ever looked.”

Peter sniffs wetly. “Thanks.”

Tony jerks a thumb in the direction Ned’s mother has gone. “You think she knows?”

“Probably. Things got crazy on the ambulance ride over, and then I had to explain to the doctor that I got shot while she was standing right there, so...Ned’s probably gonna get grounded for life.”

“Alright. No worries. I’ll have Happy run an NDA over to her.”

Peter makes a small, distressed sound. “ _ Please _ don’t make my best friend’s mom sign an NDA—it’s weird. I’ve known her since I was a little kid. She’s not gonna say anything. Can you even do that?”

“I’m kidding,” Tony says, planning on having his lawyers look into something anyway. “How do you feel?”

“Better,” Peter replies, which is probably a lie considering how awful he looks.

“This helping?” Tony asks, waving a hand at the bag of mysterious clear liquid hanging from the IV stand .

“I don’t think so, ‘cause they keep switching it out and I still have a fever.”

“Of course it’s not working,” Tony says briskly. “You’re a superhuman mutant freak with an insane metabolism. Just stating a neutral fact,” he adds when the kid gives him an affronted look. “The regular dose of whatever for your age and weight isn’t going to cut it. You just burn right through it. We know that.”

It was about all they know. Tony feels a stab of guilt. He hadn’t done enough to prepare for something like this, paying far more attention to keeping the kid safe from things he’d encounter while climbing skyscrapers and fighting crime, like gunshots and falls and stabbings. Weird biology was more Dr. Banner’s area of expertise, and Bruce is... _ gone. _ Tony has thought a great deal about it, of course—of doing the in-depth medical studies that would be enormously beneficial for keeping the kid alive and healthy if he planned on continuing to throw himself into extraordinarily dangerous situations every night. But there were complications, the sort of roadblocks that would spring up when you were dealing with a minor, tricky little things like  _ informed consent _ and  _ legal guardians.  _ The sorts of issues that had made Pepper and Rhodey and Happy look at Tony like he’d grown a second head when he’d decided to make a fifteen-year-old kid his personal pet project. Even Tony, who would easily admit to a tendency to do whatever he wants and damn the consequences, could recognize the vast, ethical challenges there.

Tony drums his fingers against his knee and tries to push aside all these annoying unknowns. “So. I’ve been talking with your doctor and the nurses, and here’s the plan—they’re gonna try and get your fever down a little bit, and then we’ll transfer you to the Tower and have my own medical guys take over. You’ll be a lot happier there. You can stay in your own private room and watch all the TV you want and eat whatever garbage you like. It’ll be like a nice little vacation for you. You just need a little rest and time to get back up on your feet, okay?”

Tony likes how easy that sounds.

“Okay,” Peter says. He’s looking out of it again and he’s still uncharacteristically quiet, and Tony wonders if the kid is really hearing any of what he’s being told. But verbally reiterating the course of action has a calming effect for Tony at the very least, so he plows ahead anyway.

“If it were up to me, I’d go ahead and transfer you now,” he continues, “but your doctors have other ideas, so...we’ll just wait and see for now. What do you think?”

The kid takes a shaky breath. “I think I need to throw up.”

Tony grabs a little kidney dish off a nearby cart and hands it to Peter. The kid ends up puking mostly all over himself and the gurney, anyway. A nurse bustles in to clean up the mess, wrapping Peter in a sheet and cheerfully handing him off to Tony while she strips the soiled bedding from the gurney.

Tony stands in the narrow space with an arm around Peter’s shivering shoulders, feeling the unnatural heat radiating off the kid and trying to breath through his mouth so he doesn’t smell the lingering odor of vomit combined with bleach. He awkwardly pats Peter’s arm.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Tony says, because the kid has been through worse shit and made it out the other side, and Tony has no reason to think this will be any different. 


	4. Chapter 4

May usually tries to avoid thinking about the strange course her life has taken for the past year. She has worked very hard to pick up all the pieces and hold everything together in the aftermath of Ben’s death, and if she stops and probes too deeply at all of it—at discovering that her kid is a masked superhero, that the internship she had had such high hopes for was a farce, that Iron Man himself would occasionally intrude into their quiet little lives in sometimes good but mostly irritating, inappropriate ways—she’d probably have a complete break down. And she can’t do that, because she’s all Peter has left and he has enough on his plate to deal with. So she jams it all into a metaphorical closet in the dusty rear of her mind and leans all her weight against the door in an attempt to hold it shut.

It gets a lot harder to keep that door from popping off its hinges after Peter is whisked from the ER to Stark Tower and all that strangeness is suddenly bearing down on her from all sides.

“The ceiling started talking to me while I was in the shower this morning,” she tells Peter, not sure if she’s amazed or indignant. “I realized I forgot to pack conditioner and I was just talking out loud to myself about what a forgetful dope I am, and the _ceiling_ told me that there was a bottle in the cabinet over the sink. Can you believe that? It knew my name. The _ceiling_ knew my name.”

“Mmm,” Peter affirms. He’s been in and out since being transferred here a week ago. Tony’s medical team had managed to get a handle on his fever and bring his temperature into more normal human ranges, only for him to develop intense vertigo and nausea that had so far evaded diagnosis. The best the med team had to offer was that it was caused by the fever damaging his inner ear.

Tony pops into the room at random hours of the day and night, perching himself in one of the chairs at Peter’s bedside and pouring over Peter’s medical charts on his tablet before vanishing again, answering May’s questions in the same frustratingly vague way the medical staff does, which doesn’t surprise her at all. Ever since crashing into their lives, he’s had an obnoxious, paradoxical ability to maintain an impersonal distance while simultaneously barging across every boundary of their own privacy. He once followed her into the bathroom during an argument about Peter and had the gall to be annoyed when she screeched at him to get out. Another time she’d come home from a late shift and crawled into bed to discover that her mattress had been replaced, and that Peter’s had been, as well.

“He read some article about bed bugs being a problem in apartment buildings here,” Peter had explained when May had confronted him.

“Does that rich asshole think we have bugs?” May had shouted, equal parts livid and humiliated. “Does he think I’m letting you live in squalor?!”

“He thinks he’s being nice,” Peter had weakly placated her. “He’s just, you know...kinda bad at it. Please don’t call him, May! Please, just let it go and don’t make it into another fight. You guys stress me out so much.”

And that had crushed her.

“I don’t like any of this,” May had fumed, tossing her phone down. She says that a lot whenever the subject of Tony Stark or Spider-Man comes up.

It’s not entirely true, of course. She wrestles with the same struggles endured by many single, working parents—what to do when she has to work late, or when she gets called in to cover a coworker’s shift, or when she or her kid gets sick. She’s fortunate in that Peter is older and largely autonomous, but she still feels guilty on those nights when she’s working late and she knows Peter is home alone, heating up leftovers in the microwave. Ned’s parents stepped in to help her out after Ben died, thank god for them, but they have young children and jobs of their own, and can’t always be available at the last minute to pick up her slack.

Tony, though—he’s been a sort of lifeline she can grab onto when she’s really drowning. She doesn’t call him often, but when she does he answers without fail, regardless of the hour. And he will come, or at least send Happy or one of his other trusted people, and fix whatever crisis Peter is experiencing that is beyond her ability to handle.

“That kid is a fucking disaster,” he had said to her once in private, after they had shared a few glasses of wine in one of their rare moments of civility. “I’d do anything for him, May, but he is a little walking dumpster fire of a person.”

“God, I know,” she had said. It was the one of the few things they agreed upon.

There are a lot of things about Tony that irk her: his blatant disregard for their privacy, his tendency to go behind her back, the way he uses money to express affection, the fact that he could be a bit of a bully when things weren’t going exactly his way. But she trusts him with Peter, deeply and implicitly. She knows the two of them keep secrets from her. Tony will sometimes call her out of the blue to say they’re working on a project and Peter would be staying the night at his place in the city or at the new compound upstate. She’s never quite sure if that’s true or if it’s a cover for something else, some dangerous mission she’s not allowed to know about, or maybe her kid is a little too mangled and they need some time for him to heal up and be presentable before he can be dropped back at her doorstep. It bothers her, really, but she bites her tongue for the most part because she knows Tony is doing his best to keep Peter safe. And she needs that right now—needs so desperately to know that there’s someone else looking out for him when she can’t be there, because if she’s really honest with herself she’s still struggling to pull everything back together a year after her world got shattered. Everything about this is new and terrifying and sometimes she feels so overwhelmed she can barely think.

And now her kid is sick and no one seems able to tell her what it is or how to fix it.

“I’m sorry you’re not feeling good, baby,” May says, brushing Peter’s hair back from his forehead.

There’s a rap at the door. Before May can answer it, Tony is opening it and walking inside.

He nods at May as he strolls over to the bed. He jams his hands into the pockets of his jacket, plastering a cheerful smile on his face and bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.

“Hey, kid. How are you feeling this morning?” he asks.

“Okay,” Peter mumbles, blinking heavy eyelids. “Can I go home soon?”

Tony glances over at May. She returns his look levelly, waiting for his answer.

“We’re working on it,” Tony says, maintaining his artificially bright tone. “I bet you’ll be going home real soon.”

May takes a deep breath, squeezing Peter’s hand before releasing it and getting to her feet.

“Can I talk to you outside?” she asks Tony in a low voice.

“Of course,” Tony replies, sniffing. He pulls a hand out of his pocket and pats Peter’s blanket-covered foot. “I’ll see you a little later, buddy. Hang in there.”

May follows him into the hallway, closing the door behind herself. She looks up at Tony.

“He says he’s in pain,” she tells him quietly.

Tony sniffs again, tapping his fingers against his thigh as he nods. “Okay. Okay, I’ll send the doctors around and have them adjust his medication.”

May nods, looking down at her feet briefly before she lifts her head again, meeting Tony’s eyes, her expression hard.

“I know you’re trying to put on a brave face for Peter, and I appreciate that, I do—but you gotta be on the level with me. No lies, no bullshit. That’s my _child_ , Tony,” she says, quiet but firm. “He’s been here a week, and I’ve got nothing. I need to know what’s going on.”

Tony adjusts his glasses, wetting his lips.

“We’re working on it,” he starts again, but May cuts him off.

“On _what?_ ” she demands sharply. “A cure? A diagnosis? Because there’s a big difference between those two things, pal.”

Tony looks at her in silence for a long moment, a muscle working in his jaw, and May feels her heart break a little.

Tony must see something shift in her expression, because he reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly.

“I’m gonna fix this, May,” he tells her. “I’ve got the best doctors and medical researchers on the planet working on this. We’re gonna fix it.”

May feels tears burning hot in her eyes. She finds herself thinking of all the many times Peter had been ill before, all the fevers and asthma attacks and ear infections, all the nights she’d stayed up late scrubbing puke out of pajamas and soothing an ill, cranky child before dragging herself into work the next day. The worry and helplessness she’d felt during those childhood illnesses seem suddenly small in comparison to what she’s feeling now. She’d had Ben by her side then to help shoulder it all, at least. Now she’s all alone in this strange tower with its talking ceilings and invisible veil of secrecy, putting all her trust in a man she barely knows.

She blinks the tears back, swallowing hard and lifting her chin.

“Promise me,” she says, her voice breaking.

Tony squeezes her shoulder again, looking at her over the tops of his glasses, his face solemn. 

“I promise, May.”

* * *

Tony’s promise to May is still rattling around in the back of his mind as he stares at the charts in front of him. 

He’s not a medical doctor or an immunologist, but with the amount of information he’s consumed the past week, Tony feels about as much of an expert as anyone on his staff. Yet despite having the best team of doctors on the planet, despite the countless hours he’s spent poring over the details of Peter’s case - there’s nothing. 

Dozens of tests and scans, poking and prodding Peter with every tool imaginable and yet everything comes back negative. 

No bacterial or viral infection, no cancer, no poisoning or indication that anything that was out of the ordinary. Tony sighed, taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. 

According to everything in front of him, Peter was the picture of perfect health - the exact opposite of what he looked like anytime he went to see him. 

Guilt nags in the back of Tony’s mind, swallowing down the uncomfortable feeling of what he can only describe as helplessness as he runs a hand over his face - waking himself up to try and figure out what the hell is happening to Peter. 

If he’d done this months ago, when he first met him - they’d have a baseline, some kind of comparison point so they could see just what the hell they were missing. 

Tony taps his hands against the lab table, fingers twitching slightly as he glances to his phone. 

Pepper was still out of the country on a business trip that Tony had all but forced her to go on - lying through his teeth that what was happening with Peter was something that he could handle alone. 

She’d seen through the lie as he was saying it but Tony had insisted, his fear getting the better of him as he does the quick mental math to try and figure out what time it was in Japan before he presses on her contact info - debating whether he should hang up before the call goes through as he brings it to his ear. 

It wasn’t fair of him to tell her to leave and yet expect her to listen to him but Tony was selfish - selfish and _terrified,_ wondering now how the hell he was going to be able to keep his promise to May when for the first time in his life, he couldn’t come up with an answer. 

As the phone rings, Tony’s mind tries to run once again through all the possibilities for what could have caused Peter’s sudden deteriorating state of being out of seemingly nowhere, only for another pang of guilt to him that it wasn’t sudden at all. 

May mentioned that Peter had seemed out of it the past few weeks, not that Tony would know of it. The very thing that took Pepper away to Japan - some bullshit with the board members of SI - had consumed his time just as negotiations with the Accords had, Tony kicking himself once again for not making a more concerted effort to keep tabs on Peter.

The whole point of repurchasing the Tower was so that he could be more of a presence in his life and even still, Tony had managed to find a way to fuck that up.

Before he can further spiral into self-loathing, Pepper picks up, Tony’s throat catching when she hears her say, “Hello?”

“Hey Pep, how’s it going? You finished with the Takahashi meeting yet? Let Rin know he still owes me a game of golf.”

“I’ll be sure to let him know,” Pepper replies carefully, in the same even tone that has Tony already anticipating her next question, “Is everything okay? How’s Peter?”

Tony blows some air out of his mouth, leaning forward in his chair as he stares down at Peter’s charts once again. 

"Clean bill of health. Absolutely nothing wrong with him at all.”

Pepper’s silent for a moment, no doubt hearing Tony’s exasperation through the other line as she says, “No change?”

“Not a damn thing, Pep. It doesn’t make any sense,” Tony whispers into the phone, resting his head in his hand before rubbing it over his face once again. He sighs, leaning it against the table with his head in his hand as he says, “I promised the kid’s aunt that I’d fix it but I don’t-- there’s nothing to _fix_.” 

“Tony--”

"I don’t know what else to look for,” Tony says, cutting Pepper off as he continues. “We’ve run every test we can possibly think of, I’ve asked every expert willing to give me the time of day to look at his charts and it’s-- there’s fucking _nothing_ to--”

“Tony,” Pepper’s voice is firm but calm, a lighthouse in the waves of uncertainty that Tony is barely holding onto as she says, “If there’s anything I can know about you, it’s that there’s never been a problem that’s come your way that you couldn’t fix it.”

Tony takes a shaky breath, closing his eyes and letting Pepper’s words soothe him. 

“You never give up and I love that about you but Tony, you _cannot_ do this to yourself. Don’t think I don’t know that you’re blaming yourself for this.” 

“If I’d just known-- if I’d checked in on him--”

“You wouldn’t have known anymore than May did,” Pepper says gently, Tony leaning his head out of his hands as he opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. “You beating yourself up for not being able to prevent the unpredictable isn’t going to help you or Peter.”

Tony sighs again, leg bobbing up and down underneath the desk that he’s at as he says, “I miss you, you know that?”

“You miss the emotional labor I do for you,” she teases, Tony smirking as she says, “But yes, I miss you too.” 

“I mean it, minute you come home. I’ll show you just how much I miss you,” Tony says, Pepper’s laugh on the other end only barely loosening the tightness he feels in his chest. 

“I’ll hold you to that. But in the meantime, listen to me Tony.”

He does, hanging onto every word as the lifeline that it is.

“Whatever is going on, whatever’s happening, you’ll figure it out.”

Tony glances up to the ceiling, pressing his lips together as Pepper’s soothing words ring out in the empty lab.

“You always do.” 

* * *

Peter holds a hand up, dispassionately examining the white, wrinkly skin on his fingertips and palm. The nurses have left him soaking in a bathtub full of tepid water for what feels like hours now in an effort to bring his spiking fever down. If it didn’t feel like such a last-ditch intervention after all the other antipyretic drugs failed, Peter would think it was kind of funny that here--in a building full of the most advanced technology known to man, with the best medical team Tony Stark could pay for--his nurses have resorted to the most basic, primitive method of reducing a fever available to them. 

The bathtub in his ensuite at the Tower is more luxurious than the one he has at home. It’s big enough for at least two people to comfortably stretch out in and deep enough that the water comes all the way up to his chest when he’s sitting upright, and the temperature is controlled by voice command so there’s no waiting for nurses to fiddle around with thermometers.

Peter hates it.

“Can I get out now?” he asks. “My hands are turning all pruny.”

“Pruny hands are better than brain damage and organ failure,” Tony replies distractedly. He’s sitting on the wide rim of the tub, scrolling through something on his tablet. It makes Peter nervous, seeing him hold such an expensive piece of technology so close to water, but then he remembers that Tony could afford thousands and thousands of replacements.

“Is that a no?” Peter asks miserably. His eyes feel itchy and achy and he wants to rub them but he’s afraid of moving too much. He’s found that if he holds his head at exactly the right angle the nauseating vertigo he’s been tormented with becomes something almost tolerable.

“That’s a no,” Tony confirms, squinting down at the bright screen. “You got point-eight degrees to go before your nurses set you free, bud.”

“What? That’s nothing. Mr. Stark, please,” Peter begs.

“Not gonna happen, so don’t try to argue with me. You’re about as threatening as a drowned kitten right now.”

Peter scowls and carefully sinks down until the water is lapping up under his chin. He tries not to think about how badly he wants May to be here with him. It isn’t fair to her. He already causes her so much worry and heartache and she deserves a break. She’s sleeping now, or working, or something...Tony had told him where she was but Peter couldn’t be sure how long ago that had been. Time has become a slippery, amorphous thing that Peter drifts in and out of. He spends most of his hours sleeping, which he likes to think is a sign that his body is healing from whatever craziness is going on with it, and most of his waking hours fighting against crippling waves of dizziness and nausea and pain, and wishing that he was asleep.

“Don’t sulk, Pete,” Tony says, scrolling again. “This is for your own good.”

“I’m not sulking,” Peter sulks, letting his arms float loosely in the water. He watches Tony tap at the screen. “What is that?”

“Some modifications I’m making to your suit,” Tony says, turning the tablet around to show Peter the screen. “What do you think of that?”

Peter blinks slowly. The schematics on the screen blur and shift in front of his eyes and he can’t make any sense of what he’s looking at. The back of his neck aches and tingles. “I don’t...I don’t know...”

“That’s okay,” Tony says smoothly. “We’ll look at it again when you’re feeling better.”

Peter takes a risk and reaches up to rub at his eyes. The relief this brings is fleeting, but at least he manages to avoid triggering another dizzy spell, which is a win in his book.

There’s a tap at the door and a nurse comes in to check his vitals again and then adds something to his IV drip. Peter watches her suspiciously. They’ve given him a lot of medication and all any of it seems to do is make him feel worse. 

“Oh, that’s the good stuff,” Tony says with manufactured cheerfulness, like he can hear what Peter’s thinking. “You’ll like that, kid.”

Peter doesn’t like it. There’s a brief burst of euphoria that would be alright if it didn’t also turn him into a weepy mess and make him feel like his head is floating away from his body, but it’s over as quick as it comes and then the horrible vertigo is back stronger than ever. Peter can taste bitter bile in the back of his mouth and he gags over and over again, his whole body trembling. He’s distantly aware of Tony’s hand gripping him under the jaw to hold his wobbling head steady above the water, and then he’s aware of nothing at all.

When he wakes up later he’s finally back in his bed. Tony is gone and Happy is there instead, snoring in an armchair in the corner of the room. Peter feels weak and shaky, like he’s just been through a bad bout of food poisoning or something. There’s a strange pressure behind his navel, more uncomfortable than painful. He rolls over onto his side in an attempt to find a more comfortable position, taking shallow breaths, but rather than abating the pressure seems to grow. A sudden wave of nausea sweeps over him and his mouth fills with saliva. He presses the back of his hand against his lips and swallows hard, but the urge to vomit is persistent.

He gets unsteadily to his feet, swaying as the room spins and tilts for a long, sickening moment until the dizziness abates enough for him to stagger to the bathroom, dragging the IV stand behind him. He shuts the door and crouches in front of the toilet, trying in vain to swallow down the sickness rising in his throat. The pressure in his stomach has gone from uncomfortable to agonizing in a matter of seconds and he groans through clenched teeth, shaking all over.

There’s a knock at the bathroom door. 

“Pete? You good in there?” Happy asks.

Peter struggles to lift his head, spitting excess saliva into the toilet before answering. “Yeah, I’m g—”

There’s a strange sensation, like a rubber band snapping inside of him, and then his mouth is filling with something hot and metallic tasting. His stomach heaves and he vomits violently into the bowl, shaking with the force of his retching until the paroxysm finally ends. He grasps weakly at the toilet, gasping and quivering, and through tear-blurred vision he can see bright, syrupy red swirls staining the water.

“Oh, shit,” he gasps out and pushes himself backwards, collapsing against the side of the bathtub. _Oh, that’s not good,_ his mind acknowledges distantly. Black spots dance around the edges of his vision. 

Happy is knocking at the bathroom door again.

“Kid, you alright? _Peter?_ ”

The next thing Peter knows he’s lying flat on his back and something is tearing apart his guts. He sucks in a frantic breath. Bright lights overhead are scorching his retinas and blurry, masked faces hover above him, shouting nonsensical words at each other or at him, he isn’t sure, and it doesn’t matter anyway because the pain is eating him alive and he can’t move or breathe or think. He manages to lift his head enough to look down at himself and he jolts in horror when he sees the gaping hole in his belly and the bloody, gloved hand that’s probing around inside of him.

He screams and screams and screams.


	5. Chapter 5

“Boss, Dr. Michaels is paging you to the medical bay.” 

Tony’s body is moving on autopilot, his mind not even giving him the chance to panic as he rushes out of the lab workshop and towards the elevator. FRIDAY moves the elevator without him having to press a button, Tony’s heart leaping up to his throat at the reasons for why he would be paged to the medical bay in the first place.

_ He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He’s not dead. _ It runs in a loop in his mind, Tony simultaneously hating and feeling an immense measure of relief in the words. If Peter was dead, FRIDAY would’ve been more urgent. If Peter was dead, Dr. Michaels would not be paging him to the medical bay. Someone would come and see him, someone would’ve  _ told _ him--

The elevator dings, signaling his arrival to the floor where the medical wing is - throwing him out of his thoughts only for his heart to feel like it’s seized in his chest when he takes a few steps forward.

May and Happy are already there, a fierce expression on May’s face that makes Tony want to take a step back - remembering what it was like to be on the opposite end of that exact expression.

He shoots a look to Happy, only for Tony’s stomach to drop when he sees the despair in one of his oldest friend’s faces - Tony’s finger twitching automatically for his phone to call Rhodey or Pepper as a comfort. 

“What’s going on?” Tony asks, May and Dr. Michaels both turning to him. Dr. Michaels nods, gesturing his hands towards an empty medical bay room. It’s not lost on Tony that this is the exact opposite direction of where Peter’s room is, the lump in his throat growing as Dr. Michaels says, “Please.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I see--” May begins, Happy gently putting a hand to her shoulder only for May to shove it off. Dr. Michaels puts a hands up in surrender, sending a pleading look to Tony.

“Please,” he says, half to May and half to Tony, “if I can speak with you privately.”

May looks at him in defiance, daring him to contradict her. Tony doesn’t have it in him to even try as he says, “If it’s all the same doc, I’m with Mrs. Parker here. Where’s the kid?”

Dr. Michael’s face falls, his eyes traveling from Tony to May then to Happy - trying to find someone who will encourage them to move elsewhere. When he finds nothing, Dr. Michaels sighs - his whole body sagging in defeat as he rubs his temples. 

“This isn’t how I normally do things--”

“Well if you haven’t noticed, things around here aren’t exactly normal,” Tony says, cutting him off. May looks at him in mild surprise and then her expression shifts - a subtle nod and the recognition of solidarity in her eyes that makes Tony stand a little straighter even if he still feels like he’s a second away from vomiting. 

Dr. Michaels sighs again, bringing his hand down and taking a deep breath - as if to prepare himself for whatever news he’s about to give. 

Tony thinks there wouldn’t be enough time in the world to prepare when Dr. Michaels begins to speak. 

“Peter’s scans continue to come back negative with any kind of abnormality. Even with his enhancements, we’ve been unable to determine any genetic, viral or bacterial explanation for his physical deterioration.”

Tony waits, the air in the hallway suddenly feeling thin as Dr. Michaels takes another breath before continuing. 

“During surgery, Peter’s metabolism appeared to burn through the anaesthesia, causing him to wake up twice.” 

May sharply inhales at that, Tony feeling no better. 

“We were able to put him under again to close him up,” Dr. Michaels goes on. “He’s in a recovery room now under heavy sedation.”

“I don’t-- I don’t understand,” May says carefully, eyeing him up and down. “You were supposed to fix the bleed. Did you find the source? How was he able to burn through the anaesthetic when you’ve been administering the same dose for the past week?” 

Dr. Michaels’ face is grim as he looks May in the eyes and says, “The situation has become difficult.”

“Bullshit,” May cuts him off, standing a little straighter. Dr. Michaels still has almost a foot on her yet even he looks intimidated. “I’m a nurse, Dr. Michaels. I know when someone is trying to prepare us for something. Spit it out.”

“Mrs. Parker--”

“That is my  _ child _ in there, Dr. Michaels,” May says again, letting out a shaky breath even if her voice stays firm. “He’s the only family I have. Tell me.” 

Dr. Michaels is quiet, searching her face for a moment before nodding once. 

“We were unable to stop the bleeding because we were incapable of determining where the source is. I’ve-- I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. 

Tony’s hand starts to shake at how  _ unsure _ Dr. Michaels sounds. There’s a reason Tony chose him as the lead doctor - the most gifted internist in the country, known for his calm and professional demeanor no matter what case is brought his way. 

To see this same man look utterly lost only causes Tony’s stomach to drop, churning even more so as Dr. Michaels says, “His organs aren’t just in failure, they’re like  _ tissue _ . Any intervention we attempted to make only caused more bleeding, to the point where I believed that by continuing we were doing him more harm than good.”

He looks meaningfully to May, Tony watching in horror as her eyes widen - seeing something in Dr. Michaels eyes that Tony doesn’t. She brings a hand to her mouth, letting out a ragged sob as her shoulders shake. 

Tony takes a step forward, his brilliant mind working just a beat too slow as he says, “What does that mean?”

Dr. Michaels turns to him, Tony feeling like he’s been punched in the gut for how desolate of an expression he sees in the doctor’s eyes. 

“I’m afraid there’s nothing more that we can do. We’ve exhausted all our efforts but--”

“I don’t  _ understand _ ,” Tony says once more, Dr. Michaels looking at him with something almost like pity before it morphs into understanding. May’s choked sob rattles his insides, Happy gently rubbing her back as Tony’s eyes dance from her to Dr. Michaels. 

“There are no more curative options available to us,” the doctor explains. “The scope of the damage, the lack of available data…”

“How long?” May asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

Her words don’t make sense to Tony. 

_ How long? How long until what _ ? he thinks.

Dr. Michaels looks impossibly sad as he says, “A few days, maybe two. I can recommend palliative measures, medication to ease the pain but unfortunately, there’s nothing more that I can do. Medically, there’s nothing wrong with him.”

He looks defeated, a feeling Tony can’t even bring himself to understand as Dr. Michaels tells May, “I’m truly sorry.” 

There’s a ringing in Tony’s ears then, knowing that they’re still talking - talking about Peter  _ dying _ \- but Tony’s beyond listening to it, their voices all muffled as his mind begins to race. 

_ He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He’s not dead. _

_ But he will be. _

It grips Tony, a painful and sharp ache in his chest at the possibility - one that he refuses to acknowledge to be true. He was talking to Peter only a few hours before. He’d looked terrible and it was clear to him that Peter was feeling miserable but he wasn’t-- he couldn't be--

Tony comes back to his body then, Dr. Michaels gone and Happy and May quietly whispering to each other.

“--bring them by after school.” Happy says, May nodding in response as she says, “Good, that’s-- that’s good. I need to call Claudia, see if she knows Michelle’s parents. They’ll want… they should have the chance to--”

“You’re bringing his friends here? Why?”

May and Happy turn to Tony, Happy with a look that Tony’s seen several times in his life and May with another firm expression - one filled with grief and determination and a terror that Tony can’t bring himself to name. 

“Tony--”

“May, I don’t care what that quack says, I’ll-- I’ll figure out something. We have-- I gotta--”

“Tony,” May says, her voice cutting through the maze that is Tony’s mind - firm and no-nonsense as she stares him down, “I am not doing this with you.”

Tony blinks at her, only for his stomach to churn with regret when he sees the tears in her eyes. Anything he’s going to say dies in his throat as May grinds her teeth together. 

“You hired that doctor to give us the best that he could. He  _ is _ the best at what he does. Tony, I’ve worked in hospitals for almost twenty years and I’ve never seen a doctor look that desperate.” 

“May, please.  _ Please _ , let me just-- let me try. Just one more day. A few more tests,” Tony pleads, May steeling herself as Tony takes another step forward. 

“Please May,” Tony whispers brokenly, May’s chin trembling slightly as she searches his face. Tony knows he’s fucked up time and time again, especially in regards to Peter. But this isn’t what’s motivating him, not completely - an unfathomable ache in his chest at the idea of living in a world where Peter doesn’t. 

May finds whatever she’s looking for, nodding once before saying, “One day. I won’t let him suffer, Tony. I  _ won’t _ .”

Tony nods so hard that his vision swarms, May straightening her shoulders and taking another deep breath before saying, “Dr. Michaels says we can go see him.” 

Tony tries to summon even an ounce of the same courage that May seems to have, glancing at Happy who looks just as lost as Tony feels as May turns without saying a word. 

The lights in Peter’s room have been dimmed as he follows May through the door. There’s an unnerving hush over which the beeping of medical monitors cuts loud and clear, adding to the somber atmosphere.

May immediately goes to Peter’s bedside, but Tony lingers near the door, trying to tamp down the dread and unease he feels swelling in his chest.

“He’s so pale,” May murmurs as she looks down at Peter’s still form, her eyes shining in the low light. She gently takes his hand in hers, lightly stroking his arm.

Tony walks over to stand beside her. He feels his stomach drop again. The kid’s as white as the bleached sheets he’s lying on, his skin tinged blue-grey around the mouth. The pallor makes the dark circles around his eyes and the crusted blood under his nose and in the corners of his lips stand out in stark relief.

The suddenness of his decline leaves Tony reeling, like he’s just taken a hammer blow to the head. A week ago the kid had been swinging around Queens catching speeding cars with his bare hands, and now he’s lying here looking like he already has one foot in the grave. 

It doesn’t make any sense.

Tony hesitantly lays a hand against Peter’s forehead. He’s burning under Tony’s palm, skin radiating heat like a furnace.

Despite the heavy sedation he’s under, Peter stirs a little at the touch, his eyes opening and wandering blindly around the room before landing on Tony. Peter frowns up at him, blinking slowly, his breath rattling between chapped lips in little struggling gasps.

“Ben?” he whispers. 

May makes a soft, pained sound before pressing a hand to her mouth, tears leaving shining tracks down her cheeks.

“It’s me, kid,” Tony says, rubbing his thumb across Peter’s furrowed brow. “It’s Tony.”

“Mr. Stark?” Peter blinks again, long and slow, the confusion clearing from his face.

“The one and only.”

“I think I really scared Happy,” Peter mumbles, struggling to focus on Tony’s face.

Tony forces his mouth to turn up in a reassuring smile. “He’s okay, kid. He’s gonna pick up your friends for you—Ned and Michelle. They’re gonna come say hi. That’ll be nice, huh? I bet you miss them. I know they miss you—Ned’s been texting me around the clock.”

“Yeah,” Peter weakly agrees. He turns his head slightly towards Tony. “I never told you...I’m sorry.”

Tony feels his stomach clench. “For what?”

Peter wets his chalky lips with his tongue, leaving a smear of red across them. “That time...I broke the handle on your door...it was an accident. I wasn’t really mad or anything...I dunno how I broke it, but...I’m really sorry.”

Tony lets out a soft huff. “Hey, don’t sweat it, buddy. I completely forgot about it.”

“Still...I’m sorry,” Peter says. He sucks in a wet, painful-sounding breath. “Am I gonna get to go home soon? I’m missing a lot of school.”

May makes another little noise, her shoulders jerking convulsively. Tony can’t bear to look at her.

“Yeah,” he says thickly. “You just gotta give me a little more time, okay? That’s all I need. Can you do that for me?”

Peter gives a tiny nod under Tony’s hand, his eyes drifting shut again.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Tony murmurs to him, not sure if it’s a promise or a plea.

* * *

Tony considers himself, first and foremost, an engineer.

When faced with a problem, he approaches it as an engineer would: design, optimize, iterate. Keep what works, make it better, stronger, more efficient; scrap what doesn’t. He’s engineered his way out of thousands of problems.

Which makes the sense of failure weighing on him that much heavier now.

He paces up and down the length of his lab, mindlessly tugging at his hair, trying to expend some of the frenetic, desperate energy vibrating every particle in his body and setting his heart galloping against his ribs. 

He stops his pacing, bracing his hands against the surface of a work table and taking a few deep, steadying breaths. 

He’s been here before, he reminds himself. He’d been dying of palladium poisoning, his blood turning to toxic sludge in his veins, and he’d pulled a rabbit out of his hat at the last possible second. He can do it again. He  _ has _ to do it again. 

It’s not quite the same, though. Tony had known exactly what was killing him, but they’re staring at a blank page when it comes to the kid. They’ve tested him for everything from tetanus to hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, and everything’s come back negative. Looking at the data and test results, Peter is in peak physical condition, a picture of perfect health.

Except he’s dying.

Tony slams a fist into the table top, chewing at his bottom lip. He’s missing  _ something _ —some little detail, a tiny crumb of a clue, that’s the key to solving all of this. He’s  _ sure _ of it. He just has to figure out what it is.

_ A day.  _ May has given him a day. After seeing Peter, Tony wonders despairingly if he even has that long. He feels the passage of every single second of time like an ice pick being driven between his shoulder blades, like every tick of the clock is another nail in the kid’s coffin. 

“FRI, pull up all of Peter’s charts and lab results,” Tony requests briskly, watching the data light up on a holographic display in front of him. “I want you to scour them top-to-bottom, tug every thread, overturn every rock, got it? See if we’re missing some...pattern or hiccup somewhere. Highlight anything that came back inconclusive or at the extreme ranges of normal.”

“You got it, boss,” the A.I. replies cheerfully. 

“Yeah,” Tony mutters, scrolling through the data, wishing he had half of FRIDAY’s confidence.

* * *

Five hours later, Tony’s put Peter through another gamut of testing, and he’s no closer to figuring out what’s killing the kid than he was before. 

And Peter is very clearly dying right before Tony’s eyes, no matter how hard Tony wants to deny it. The kid’s a little paler, a little more frail every time Tony enters his room. Handling him becomes like touching overripe fruit—no matter how gentle the nurses are, they leave spongy black bruises anywhere they touch him, blood seeping through to the surface of his skin sometimes. 

Worse still, Peter is burning through the drugs he’s being administered at a rate that’s accelerated even for his enhanced metabolism, which means he’s fully awake and lucid for all the poking and prodding. He’s a better patient than Tony ever is, stoically submitting to every ordeal when it’s clear to everyone in the room that he’s in terrible pain, but Tony can tell he’s reaching a breaking point.

“I don’t think I can do this again,” Peter finally tells him, weakly hugging a pillow to his chest as the nurses prep him for another lumbar puncture.

“This is nothing—just a little pin prick,” Tony soothes. “Remember that time you got stabbed with that butcher knife? You were mad when I made you come over here to get it looked at. You told me you were gonna walk it off. This is nothing compared to that, right?”

Peter looks up at him with wide, shining eyes. “I know, but...where’s May?”

“I’m right here, honey,” May says, coming around to stand next to Tony where Peter can see her.

Peter reaches for her, and she gently takes his hands in hers.

“May...can we not do this, please?” he asks, his eyes jumping from her to the nurses setting up around his bed.

“Peter, honey, they’re just trying to figure out what’s making you sick, so they can get you well again,” May says. She’s trying to sound comforting and calm, but Tony can hear the faint tremor in her voice.

“I’m feeling better, though, really, so we don’t have to do this,” Peter insists. “I feel a lot better today, May.”

May takes a shaky breath. “I’m glad, baby. You’re being so brave.”

There’s a soft tap at the door. Happy pokes his head through, looking more somber than Tony’s ever seen him before.

“The kid’s friends are here,” he quietly announces. “I got them waiting down the hall.”

Tony turns back to Peter, plastering a reassuring smile on his face. “You hear that, buddy? Ned and the girl you refuse to acknowledge you have a crush on are here. As soon as we get this procedure done, we’ll take a break and you can see them. That’ll be nice, right?”

His jokes and assurances fail to put Peter at ease. The kid’s eyes dart anxiously around the room as he struggles to sit up, his face twisted with pain.

“May, May...please,” Peter begs, his breath coming in sharp, agonized hiccups. “I don’t wanna do this.”

“You’re alright, kid,” Tony says, trying to hold him down as gently as he can. “I promise this is gonna be over quick.”

“Stop,” May says. 

Tony looks up at her, eyebrows raised.

“May—“ he starts, but she cuts him off.

“I want you to stop,” May says, her voice breaking.

Tony wets his lips, releasing a sharp breath. Peter is still wheezing laboriously, his lips blue. There’s a pink-tinged foam at the corners of his mouth and his nose has started to bleed, a dark syrupy rivulet slowly rolling down his cheek. Tony wipes at it with his sleeve, trying to clean it up but only managing to smear it across Peter’s cheek. He waves a hand at the nurses who step forward to help. 

“Okay—okay, he’s scared. Let him calm down,” he tells them. “We’ll try this again in a bit.”

“No,” May says again, quiet but firm this time. 

Tony’s head whips back around towards her. He blinks rapidly, his heart suddenly feeling like it’s pounding against his sternum.

“Don’t do this…” he softly pleads, his own voice coming strained through the tightness seizing up his throat. “May…”

May takes a deep breath. There are tears running down her cheeks but her expression is determined.

“I want you to stop,” she repeats. “That’s enough. That’s enough. I want you to leave. I want everyone to leave, until I say you can come back.”

Tony stands, feeling numb all over.

“You promised me a day,” he reminds her raggedly. “May... _ please.” _

May turns towards him, her eyes flashing.

“Don’t you dare say another word,” she warns him with quiet ferocity. “I want you to go.”

Tony blinks at her, feeling like she’s just punched him in the gut. He looks down at Peter, lying half-conscious and gasping shallowly, his face smeared with blood. Tony feels a wave of despair roll over him.

He turns away, unable to look at May again as he stumbles towards the door.

* * *

Tony knows time is running out. 

It’s terrifying in a way he hasn’t felt since he flew a nuke up into space, an all-encompassing sense of dread that he can’t even try and overcome when Ned walks down the hall, trailed by Dr. Leeds and a girl he’s never seen in person but knows to be MJ from the files he has on any of Peter’s acquaintances. 

“Claudia,” May says warmly, walking to her as Dr. Leeds brings May into a fierce hug - Tony feeling a little out of place as he rocks on his heels back and forth. Ned looks just as terrified as he feels but it’s MJ that takes Tony a little back, eyes locked on him as she makes a beeline towards him.

“MJ—” Ned tries to stop her but MJ just stares at him, Tony catching the terrified look in her eyes before it devolves into something completely neutral as she says, “Where is he?” 

May and Dr. Leeds grow quiet, Tony clearing his throat and nodding towards the room that Peter is currently in. 

“I’ll take you both in to see him,” May says, Tony looking away from MJ’s steady gaze back to the woman that he feels like he’s failed time and time again as she extends a hand out to where Peter’s room is. 

Dr. Leeds glares at Tony as he moves out of the way, May seemingly steeling herself as she moves to go in and see her nephew once more - Tony feeling yet another wave of shame for not only failing to find a solution, but for causing Peter more pain to begin with. 

Before he has a chance to go further into a guilt spiral of his own making, Ned moves to nudge MJ to follow after them only for her to stay planted where she is - squinting at Tony before asking, “Did you ever figure out what that thing was?”

“I’m sorry?” Tony asks, Ned looking as if a light bulb’s gone off in his head as he gasps. 

“Gooey,” he whispers, MJ looking at him before nodding and looking back to Tony - an almost pleading expression on her face as she says, “Have you? Cause what if that’s—”

“What’s causing all of this,” Ned finishes for her, looking at Tony with the same kind of earnest expression that reminds him so much of Peter it hurts. 

“Back up just a few moments for me,” Tony says, holding up a hand. “Gooey?” 

Ned’s nods his head so much that he looks almost like a bobble head, MJ eyeing him suspiciously when she asks, “Wait, did Peter not tell you?”

She turns to Ned and whispers, “I  _ knew  _ he wasn’t going to—“

“He said he did!” Ned whispers back, the pieces falling into place for Tony like a bolt of lightning.

“Wait. Gooey— that slime looking thing?” he asks.

Tony feels almost out of breath, like the truth had been staring at him in the face for weeks and he’d missed it. He’d fucking  _ missed _ it, too focused on the Accords and SI business and not on every single world that ever came out of Peter’s mouth.

“I’ll— I’ll be back,” Tony says, taking a step back and moving towards the elevator - the two teenagers looking at him with a mix of bewilderment and curiosity. Tony’s too focused on the blaring alarm bells in his mind to notice, running through his interaction with Peter over and over again in a loop.

He’d dismissed him out of hand and then completely forgot about the alien slime Peter had brought him, kicking himself for allowing anything else to come before the responsibility he has - to keep Peter safe. 

The weapons. The ferry. The plane crash. Now this. Time and time again he hasn’t listened to Peter, but Tony tells himself he won’t ever do that again.

_ Please let me have a chance to never do that again,  _ he whispers to no one in particular - catching the concerned looks of Peter’s friends just before the elevator doors close to take him back to his workshop.

* * *

As soon as he got into his lab, he orders FRIDAY to barricade the doors. He doesn’t care about Secretary Ross or whatever investor wants to bother him, could call Rhodey or Happy back later. All his focus and attention had to be on this “Gooey” thing - something so clearly extraterrestrial that it sends a shiver down his spine.

It’s as if this is the missing piece of the puzzle that he’s been searching for, the lone thread that he couldn’t unravel because he didn't know where to look in the first place. 

Time starts to lose meaning though he knows it’s been hours - for the messages that keep trying to pop up that Tony tacitly ignores, for the reminders from FRIDAY that he should check them only to manually deactivate her voice capacities - singularly focused on figuring out what the hell this inky black thing is and how it is affecting Peter.

It’s not till the music cuts off suddenly, Tony still so in the zone that it’s not until a few seconds pass that he realizes there’s no music playing - looking up and turning to see the only person in the world who could override every single one of his security measures.

Pepper looks as if she’s just stepped off a plane, every instinct that tells him to greet her shutting down as he focuses back on his task and says, “Pep, I think I got it.”

“Tony,” Pepper says, her voice low yet firm - a tinge to it that only in hindsight would Tony recognize for what it was.

“I’m so close to figuring out what this thing is“ Tony rambles, hearing Pepper’s soft footsteps come up behind him as he sends another tiny electric shock to the inky blob in front of him.

It doesn’t like it, tendrils snapping against the little rod he’s using but Tony’s fascinated - convinced that this is bringing him closer to uncovering the solution to their problems like he has time and time again. 

“Tony,” Pepper repeats, taking a deep breath before saying, “Tony, look at me.”

“Pep, I’m—I gotta focus. I’m so close to this, I’m almost there. I can feel it. I just need to—”

Before he can say anything more, he’s surprised by Pepper’s gentle touch on his arm - looking to her only for a feeling in his chest to tighten at seeing the tears in her eyes. 

There’s an immediate whisper in the back of his mind of what it could be, something that Tony immediately dismisses out of hand as he asks, “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Tony, I’m so sorry,” Pepper gently whispers, the tenderness in her words and in her touch just further unnerving Tony - wracking his brain to try and remember the last time she’d looked at him in  _ this _ specific way. 

He’s loved Pepper for years, has seen her in so many different ways and through so many different life experiences. There is something in the way she looks at him now that terrifies him to his core, not even realizing he’s shaking his head until Pepper’s hands come up to gently cradle his face, her eyes searching his.

“Tony, he’s gone,” she says.

“What?” Tony asks, wrenching himself from her grasp as he stands - backing up from the desk and away from her. 

Pepper looks at him as if he’s a wounded animal, hands still extended in a calming motion as she says, “Happy said they tried to call but no one could come in. As soon as I landed, FRIDAY told me—”

“FRIDAY’s-- she’s down. I turned her off for—“ Tony runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head again. “I don’t understand.”

Pepper looks wrecked for the briefest of moments before she seemingly steels herself, the same determined expression that he’s seen dozens of times over the years coming over her face as she says, “Dr. Michaels said Peter had another seizure. His organs were failing and the damage— it was just too much...” she trails off, Tony looking at her dumbfounded.

She looks like Pepper,  _ sounds _ like Pepper but can’t possibly be her - the forthright and confident woman that he’s known for decades never being at a loss for words. Yet the woman in front of him looks so broken and vulnerable, so much like  _ Pepper _ that it horrifies him - the words that she’s saying not registering as he takes another step backwards.

“Peter’s gone. I’m so,  _ so _ sorry, Tony,” she says quietly, taking a step forward as he starts to shake his head even more furiously. 

“FRIDAY, reactivate,” he calls out as his breath hitches, Pepper looking desperate and firm all at the same time as the lights in the lab start to boot up. 

“Tony—”

“No, no, no, no, it’s—I have it. I almost have it. Pep, I—” Tony starts to ramble, clutching at his shirt as he stumbles backwards - only to fall to the ground with a clatter as FRIDAY’s voice rings out, “Boss, I have some news. There are several urgent messages from May Parker, Dr. Michaels and Colonel Rhodes. I strongly recommend that you listen to them.”

Tony lets out a strangled cry just as Pepper rushes forward, kneeling in front of him as he searches her face. 

This can’t be real, it  _ can’t _ be - a deep and overwhelming ache in his chest as he claws at his shirt - Pepper immediately reaching for him as his breathing starts to get haggard, like a weight had been placed on his chest that he couldn’t remove. 

“No,” Tony brokenly whispers, “no, it can’t. Pep, I’m—”

“I’m so sorry, Tony,” she whispers back, Tony seeing the tears in her eyes and the ones streaming down her cheeks as she takes his head into her hands - his own vision blurring as the truth begins to settle into his chest. 

“FRIDAY?”

This was his greatest nightmare come to life, it had to be - a part of Tony convinced that he was still dreaming. Yet that spell is completely broken when FRIDAY’s voice rings out again, seeing Pepper’s tortured expression when she says, “I’m sorry, boss.”

Tony lets out a pained cry, falling into Pepper’s arms as the sob he hadn’t even realized had been building pours of him - as the unfathomable, aching reality started to set in. 

He’d failed Peter, time and time again. The weapons. The ferry. The plane crash. Now this. 

Tony lets himself sink into Pepper’s embrace, his whole body shaking with the realization that this was a failure he would never be able to recover from. 


	6. Chapter 6

Tony finds himself remembering the night his parents died, the turbulent emotions of that event echoing again in this present time.

The way the grief and shock skew the passage of time, the hours passing by in waves both interminable and instantaneous. The sense of surreality, like all of this is happening to someone else. The crushing guilt of too many unsaid words and unkind actions.

He feels that guilt acutely now, sitting alone with Peter in a temperature-controlled room in his private lab that’s serving as a makeshift morgue until May is able to articulate her wishes regarding an autopsy and funeral arrangements.

Tony should be with her, he knows, feeling another piercing stab of guilt. He’s left her with Happy and Dr. Leeds, unable to bear looking her in the face yet, not when the wound of his failure to save her nephew is still gaping and raw. 

His grief in the aftermath of his parents’ death had had much to do with regrets regarding his cold, frayed relationship with his father and the sorrow it had made for his mother. Regret now forms the foundation of his grief for Peter, as well. He had thought he’d been doing the wiser—the  _ kinder— _ thing in keeping the kid at arm’s length, installing Happy and Karen as go-betweens, maintaining a protective layer of professionalism to shield Peter from Tony’s messy, dangerous life.

He sees now how wrong he had been, and that makes the sting of this failure throb sharper—Tony is supposed to be a futurist, and yet so often he finds himself only able to see his mistakes in hindsight.

A fatal flaw, one that haunts him again now as he sits beside Peter’s pale, still body laid out on a workbench, a sheet covering him to the chest.

One of the nurses had kindly tried to clean him up a little before he had been brought down here, dressing him in clean clothes and washing his face. She’d missed some blood caked along his hairline at his temple from his final nosebleed. 

Tony gets up and goes to the bathroom, returning with a damp hand towel. He gently wipes at the rusty flakes with it, holding Peter’s head steady with his other hand. The kid still feels warm to the touch, but his skin has taken on a glassy, colorless translucency in the hours since his passing, threaded through with delicate veins, his closed eyelids purpled with tangled webs of capillaries.

“Christ, kid,” Tony says, dropping the towel and pressing the back of his hand against his mouth, exhaling shaky breaths against trembling fingers, overwhelmed with anguish.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, pressing a hand into the crown of Peter’s head. “I’m so sorry, kid. I should’ve…”

_ Saved you. Fixed this. Paid attention. Listened. Been there for you.  _ A thousand other ‘should haves’ flicker across his mind like the lashes of a whip.

Tony bows his head, swallowing down the tightness seizing his throat. He takes another shaky breath, and then gets to his feet, feeling like his limbs weigh a thousand pounds.

He smooths a hand through Peter’s hair and takes one last look at his pale, slack face, still and empty, before gently pulling the sheet over Peter’s head.

“Dim the lights, FRIDAY,” Tony murmurs, gazing down at the shrouded body. “Privacy mode. Cut the cameras in this wing. Only grant access to approved personnel.”

“Yes, boss,” the A.I. replies, her tone sounding unusually somber as the lights in the room dim to a soft glow.

Tony swallows again, wetting his lips. There’s nothing he can do here for Peter now, but he can look out for the kid’s last remaining family, at the very least. “Where’s May?”

“Still in the med bay.”

Tony nods, briefly touching a hand to the kid’s concealed head, a final parting gesture, before he turns and leaves, grief following him like a shadow out the doors.

* * *

Tony feels like he’s having an out of body experience as he makes his way back to the med bay, FRIDAY’s directions to where she is the only reason he’s on this floor.

If he had his way, Tony would be looking at the end of a bottle right now - throwing away years of sobriety without a care in the world, locking himself away in his lab and making it so that even Pepper couldn’t get to him.

He made a promise though, one that if he couldn’t keep in life he’ll be damned before he breaks it in death - willing himself to move forward until he’s at the door to Peter’s old room.

It’s clean and empty now, the bed remade and ready for a new patient. Yet May Parker is still sitting in the same chair she has been all week, eyes transfixed on the empty bed though from the look on her face, Tony can only imagine what she’s actually seeing.

Tony feels like he’s rooted in place, everything within him screaming for him to get out of here - as far and as fast as possible.

He steels himself, forcing his feet to work and to move closer to her. Tony swallows down the lump in his throat, trying and failing to find the words to say - ready to take on whatever anger or hurt or pain she wants to throw his way - when May speaks, taken aback by how calm she sounds. 

“Peter used to have asthma.”

Tony is struck by the past tense, devastated that Peter now would ever be a  _ was _ rather than an  _ is _ , only for May to continue, “Before all of this.” 

She waves her hand around the room, still staring at the empty space at the bed in front of her before bringing her hand down. 

Understanding floods through him as she says, “It was so bad that Ben and I used to joke that all it would take is a slight breeze to take him out. Ben was an EMT, it’s-- part of the job. Terrible humor.”

She laughs but Tony can sense that there’s no humor in it, having been around enough hospital staff in his lifetime to know that this was likely a coping mechanism just as May unloading to him now is. 

“The last time he ever went to the hospital, Ben and I thought that was it,” May says, grinding her teeth as Tony takes a few tentative steps forward. “He had such a high fever, way,  _ way _ too high. I’d never seen anything like it and neither had Ben. We didn’t think he would make it through the night.”

May’s voice catches at the end of her last sentence, Tony swallowing down the guilt he feels deep in his throat as he comes to sit at the chair opposite Peter’s now empty bed. 

He sits, catching as May quickly wipes a tear from her eye as she says, “But then the next day, like magic he just… woke up. The doctors were so surprised, they’d been treating him for years and had never seen him like that.”

May sighs, Tony seeing the faintest hint of a smile on her face that doesn’t quite reach her eyes until she turns to look at him.

“I know what that was now, that he-- he was becoming  _ Spider-Man _ ,” May says with no small hint of pride, the ache in Tony’s chest growing larger. 

“I thought… I  _ hoped _ …” May says, trailing off as she shifts her attention away from Tony and back to the empty bed, Tony taking the opportunity to clear his throat as he says, “Whatever you need, May. Whatever-- I’ll pay for anything.”

May shakes her head, Tony summoning up his courage to try and convince the woman who probably hates him most in the world to let him do this one thing when she surprises him yet again when she says, “You don’t have to do that.”

“No, May. I-- I insist. Whatever you need, I’ll--”

“ _ Please _ . Not--” May’s voice is so broken, so  _ devastating _ that it stops Tony in his tracks - forcing himself to look at her as she looks back at him with watery eyes. “That’s not what I’m saying.” 

Tony feels at a complete loss for words yet again, a sensation that he’s beginning to wonder he’ll have to get used to only to be completely taken aback as she May says, “He always looked up to you, you know.”

It’s words that just take the wind out of him, reeling from the failure that had brought him to his knees - only for May to say, “You and Captain America and the Avengers, it’s the only bedtime story he ever wanted to hear. The only costumes he ever wanted for Halloween.”

May laughs, a short and wet sound that makes Tony wish that he could do more to hear this and not her sobs, a sound that still echoes in his mind from when he'd finally left the lab.

"He's— he was such a good kid. I know he wouldn’t want me to be angry with you for promising things you shouldn’t have ,” May says, Tony's stomach doing flip flops for how broken it sounds and hears the words she doesn’t say.

He wants to tell her that any blame she wants to throw his way, he’d take it all in more - even a small, more desperate part of him wants her to forgive him now, to tell him that he tried his best and it wasn’t his fault.

But May had never been one to mince words and it didn’t look as if that was going to stop anytime soon as she says, “It’s really hard not to.”

"Yeah," is all Tony is able to eke out, clearing his throat a few times before looking up to May and seeing the tears streaked across her cheeks.

"When his parents died, Ben and I used to tell him that we’d always stick together. After— after Ben died, I told him that it was still him and me," May says softly, Tony forcing himself to hold her gaze as her chin trembles. Tony feels his heart shatter when she whispers, "Now it's just me."

_ The last Parker standing _ , his mind supplies - a terrible thought that fills him with a conviction just as sure as the promise that he'd given to Peter's body not even a few moments before. 

Forgiveness may not be something that he can seek from May, just as he’s unsure if he’ll ever be able to forgive himself. But he makes a promise right then and there, a conviction that flows through him just as the guilt freely does.

He'd failed Peter, but he wouldn't fail May.

Not if it was the last thing he did.

* * *

Tony can’t sleep.

He’s well acquainted with insomnia, and his usual go-to non-solution for this issue is to embrace the sleeplessness, shutting himself up in his lab to work. He’s overcome countless engineering problems in the thin grey hours of the morning after a red-eyed night of tinkering.

But right now his lab is serving as a mausoleum rather than a sanctuary, and he can’t bear being alone there with Peter’s body, haunted by the ghosts of his failure.

He stalks the hallways of the Tower instead, like he himself has become a specter, drifting silently and without direction, lost in grief-stricken thoughts.

Once he catches sight of one of Peter’s friends standing in a doorway, watching him with glittering dark eyes, her face pale and emotionless, streaked with tear tracks. Tony stumbles to a stop, wondering if he should say something to her, but she silently closes the door before he can find any words.

Pepper finds him hours or minutes later—time feels dilated again, amorphous. She gently takes his arm and guides him back to their apartment upstairs.

“Take a shower,” she orders softly. “And come to bed. I can ask the doctor for something to help you sleep, if you’d like.”

“No,” Tony says hoarsely. He clears his throat. “No, that’s alright. I don’t need anything. Just you.”

Pepper squeezes his hand and offers him a sad smile, her eyes shining.

“You did everything you could,” she says to him later, while he lies in bed wrapped in her arms. “Tony...you did everything you could for him.”

_ I didn’t, _ Tony thinks. If he had, the kid would still be alive now. May wouldn’t be burying her child. The city wouldn’t be mourning their hero.

He says nothing, mute with grief. He lays his head on Pepper’s chest and listens to the steady rhythm of her heartbeat until sleep finally pulls him down.

* * *

He’s roused in the early hours of the morning by FRIDAY.

“Boss, you’re needed down in the lab,” the A.I. urgently relays. “There’s been a security breach.”

Tony sits up, instantly awake. He exchanges alarmed looks with Pepper.

“Security breach?” she murmurs, her brow furrowed with confusion. 

Tony doesn’t wait to consider the possibilities. He throws back the comforter and jumps out of bed, yanking a pair of pants on before darting across the apartment to the elevator.

FRIDAY immediately takes him down to the lab. Happy is there waiting for him as he steps off the elevator. The man looks as white as a ghost, shaken in a way Tony has never before seen.

“What the hell’s going on?” Tony asks, alarm bells ringing even louder in his mind.

“The kid’s gone,” Happy blurts out.

Tony shakes his head in confusion. “Gone? What do you mean,  _ gone?” _

“I came down here, you know, just to—to check on him,” Happy continues in a rush. “And Tony—the body’s gone. Peter’s gone.”

“That’s not possible,” Tony says, shaking his head as he pushes past Happy towards the room where Peter’s body lies and wrenches the door open. “The lab’s on lockdown. There are  _ five _ people with access to this room. He can’t have just…”

_ Disappeared. _

Tony stands in the doorway of the room, rapidly blinking as he tries to understand the impossible situation before him.

The work table where Peter’s body had been laid out is empty, the sheet that had been covering him lying in a heap on the floor.

Tony sags against the doorframe, his legs suddenly gone weak.

“What the hell?” he croaks out.


	7. Chapter 7

Michelle is no stranger to loss. 

It wasn’t something she ever talked about, just as her parents didn’t talk about it. Her earliest memories revolved around Gayle. Despite the almost decade that separated them, Gayle was her first best friend - the greatest big sister that Michelle could’ve ever dreamed up.

Gayle was smart, funny, beautiful. Michelle could still vividly remember sitting on Gayle’s bed as she got ready to go out - long braids that swished when she walked, eyeliner that she’d spend seconds on yet was perfect every single time, and a smile that could brighten up the room. 

Michelle was eight when Gayle died, yet the pain of that loss - of all the memories she would never get to make, of all the things she’d never get to talk to her about, of all the years that had been robbed from them because of a drunk driver slamming into the passenger side of Gayle and her new husband’s car - never left. 

Eight years later and the loss of Gayle in her family’s life still hung around them like a cloud, thick and heavy - threatening to burst at any moment. It was a miracle in a way, that her parents were still together or that they ever let their now  _ only _ daughter ever out of their sight. 

Yet despite being deeply acquainted with loss, to know how it feels to hear news that punches you in the gut and leaves you breathless, Michelle isn’t sure how to handle what’s in front of her now.

She’d heard Tony Stark wandering the halls only to meet his eyes and feel the same miserable sense of grief mirrored back at her, closing the door and turning her attention back to Ned. 

Her phone buzzes, Michelle slipping it out of her pocket as Ned holds a pillow tight to his chest, the two of them in one of the dozens of guest bedrooms at this stupid tower - a tower that despite being filled with and funded by billionaires hadn’t been able to keep Peter alive. 

**Mom** : how’s everything going? Still at Ned’s? 

Michelle glances up to Ned whose back is to her, staring off into the distance. She quickly taps out a reply, letting her know that she was okay and that she’d check in with her again before she goes to sleep.

Michelle doesn’t plan on going to sleep anytime soon but her mom doesn’t have to know that. 

A part of her regrets lying to them but Michelle reasons for now at least, it’s for the best. 

How could she explain to her parents what she could barely understand herself? That the same Peter that she’d had a massive, embarrassing crush on was Spider-Man? That the same Peter that had become one of her best friends had gotten sick without warning, without reason, and without explanation?

That Peter was dead? 

Michelle takes a shaky breath, slipping her phone back in her pocket and forcing herself to remain in the moment with Ned. 

For as tight-lipped as Michelle was about her life, Ned was just as open - sharing anything and everything about his life and what he thought. It’s one of the things Michelle loves about him, his ability to make someone smile without even having to try.

He reminds her of Gayle, in a way. 

It’s Gayle’s memory that spurns her forward, walking over to the bed and sitting across from Ned - facing him.

She can see now that Ned is still clutching the pillow tight, that his hands are twisting themselves over and over around each other, and that the tears falling down his face haven’t stopped. 

If Gayle was here, she would’ve known what to say, Michelle thinks. But Gayle wasn’t, just as Peter wasn’t, the thought of that taking Michelle’s breath away. 

She swallows it down, or tries to at least - shifting till she’s facing the wall with Ned. She wrings her own hands together, picking at the skin between her pointer finger and thumb as she stares down at her hands. 

Their friendship has never been a particularly talkative one, Ned filling in the blanks between them for the most part. Ned’s silence unnerves Michelle, just as the idea of Peter not breathing anymore does. 

“That was my mom,” Michelle says, Ned still staring off into the distance as if she hadn’t said a word. “I told her I was still at your house.”

Michelle’s lip trembles slightly, gritting her teeth together before whispering, “I don’t know what to tell her.”

Ned lets out a sharp laugh at that, soft and filled with the kind of agony that Michelle knows all too well as she looks up to see him - tears still steadily streaming down his face as he hugs his pillow tighter.

“My mom can uh, call your mom. If you want,” Ned says, sniffing as he wipes away some of the tears in his eyes across the back of his hand. “She has experience with that. You know, cause she’s a doctor.”

Michelle doesn’t know how to respond to that just as Ned doesn’t seem to understand why he’s said it, shaking his head a few times before saying, “Not that any of it mattered anyway.”

“Ned--”

“It can’t be real, MJ,” Ned whispers, the lump in Michelle’s throat growing larger as he finally turns to her. He looks just as broken as she feels, Michelle trying and failing to swallow down the sob threatening to break as he grips the pillow tighter. 

“It can’t be. It’s-- it’s  _ Peter _ ,” Ned whispers, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes tighter - as if this was all a nightmare that they all desperately needed to wake up from. 

It  _ was _ a nightmare, but there was no waking up from this - Michelle reaching out her hand and resting it on his arm. 

Ned snaps his eyes open, glancing to her in almost surprise - only to drop the pillow and surprise her with a hug. 

Michelle’s frozen for the briefest of seconds before immediately leaning into it, the power of a Ned Leeds hug being something she hadn’t realized how much she needed till now.

Ned burrows his head into her neck as Michelle holds him, his arms wrapped tightly around her as they both seemed to lean into the comfort they craved.

Yet it also fills Michelle with regret, holding Ned even tighter to stave away the guilt she feels churning in her gut. 

She’d been brought to the tower to say goodbye to Peter, everything within her fighting against accepting that Peter was dying right up until the moment that he had. 

She wishes more than ever that she could go back a few hours ago to when Peter was dying, that she’d held his hand and told him that it was okay to go instead of standing there silently - horrified at how awful he’d looked, how  _ dead _ he appeared even when he was still alive. 

She wishes she’d held his hand when he was alive too, but she’d been just as scared - scared of getting close to someone just to lose them. 

Michelle hates that she was right, holding Ned tighter and closing her eyes to try. She tries to ward off the memory of what Peter had looked right before he died by thinking of what he looked like a week ago, daydreaming about something in chemistry class. 

There’s a deep, dark and secret part of her that wishes she’d never let him in, that she’d never become friends with him or with Ned, if only to stop the overwhelming pain that she feels sitting deep in her chest. Michelle chases that thought away as much as she can, grounding herself in this miserable moment with Ned and wishing that the universe was kinder than it actually was. 

* * *

Michelle must fall asleep at some point, because she opens her eyes to find herself lying in bed, curled up against Ned’s back. She rolls over onto her back, blinking up at an unfamiliar ceiling, momentarily disoriented. Then all the terrible memories come crashing back into her like a rogue wave, the undertow sucking her under and leaving her breathless and numbed.

She doesn’t have time to dwell on the grief, though. There’s a commotion in the hallway beyond the door to their room—the sound of raised voices, running footsteps, a woman crying. Michelle sits up, frowning, as the commotion gets louder.

Ned stirs beside her, lifting his head.

“What’s that? What’s going on?” he murmurs, brow furrowed.

“I don’t know. I just woke up, too.” 

Michelle goes to the door and cracks it open, peering out. She spots Ned’s mother with her arm around May Parker’s shoulders, standing a little ways down the hall with Tony and Happy. May is gesturing wildly at the two men, her face streaked with tears.

“What do you mean—he’s  _ gone?”  _ she cries out, sounding furious and heartbroken. “What are you saying? I don’t understand...he can’t just—did someone...did someone  _ take _ him?”

“What the fuck?” Michelle murmurs to herself. She looks over her shoulder at Ned. “Dude—I think  _ Peter’s missing.” _

Ned frowns. “What—what do you mean,  _ missing?” _

“It sounds like someone took the body or something.”

“What the fuck!” Ned echoes, launching himself up and racing over to stand beside Michelle, standing on his toes to peer over her shoulder.

“—security footage?” they catch his mother asking, her face stern as she looks from Tony to Happy.

Tony shakes his head, grimacing. “That wing of the lab was under privacy mode—the cameras weren’t recording. But no one could get in or out unless authorized, and there are only five people with access—three are standing right here.”

“So  _ who _ took him, Tony?” May asks, her voice shaking with barely contained emotion. “Who took Peter?”

“Holy shit!” Ned says, too loudly. Michelle elbows him in the side, but it’s too late. The group in the hall turn towards them and spot them eavesdropping before Michelle can close the door.

The adults exchange looks, and Happy quickly steps forward, his expression dour.

“I’ll take care of the kids,” he mutters, stalking towards Michelle and Ned. He points a finger at them. “Alright. You and you—grab your stuff. Time to go home.”

“What happened to Peter?” Ned asks as Happy pushes his way into their room, shutting the door behind himself.

“Nothing,” Happy grunts, grabbing their backpacks and marching them towards the door.

“We heard you guys talking,” Michelle says, trotting along next to the man as he hustles them down the hall towards the elevator. “We know Peter’s body is missing. Did someone take him?”

“Everything’s fine,” Happy says shortly, pushing her and Ned into the elevator.

“That didn’t sound like everything’s fine,” Ned persists. “Where’s Peter?”

Happy aggressively mashes the elevator buttons. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about our best friend who died of some weird alien flu that turned his guts to soup, and whose body has now mysteriously disappeared?” Michelle says flatly.

Happy looks guilty now, shifting his weight back and forth on his feet, his jaw working like he’s gnawing on his tongue.

“We’re gonna take care of everything,” he finally amends more gently as the elevator doors open to the garage. He gestures outward. “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride home.”

“You know you two can’t talk to anyone about this,” he continues later, as he pulls the car up in front of Michelle’s apartment complex. “Don’t go spreading rumors around school, alright?”

“Yeah,” Ned replies quietly, sniffing.

Michelle says nothing, unbuckling her seatbelt and climbing out of the car. She’d spent nearly the entire ride home pestering Happy with more questions, but he’d answered her only with grunts and evasions. She’s almost shaking with fury now, and figures that if he won’t answer her, she doesn’t owe him a reply, either.

But Happy seems to accept Ned’s acquiescence on behalf of both of them. He gets their bags out of the trunk and hands them over, looking uncomfortable again as he chews his tongue once more.

“Listen...I’m really sorry about Pete,” Happy says finally. “He is...he  _ was _ a really great kid, and…”

He trails off, sticking a hand in his pocket and jangling the change inside, looking off down the street and blinking rapidly, his baggy eyes red-rimmed.

Michelle turns around and walks up the steps to her building’s entrance without another word. Ned trails behind her just as silently, like a ghost, grief emanating off him in palpable waves.

As soon as they’re inside her apartment, Michelle closes the doors and spins around to face Ned, her hands clenched into firsts.

“Something  _ really  _ fucked up is going on,” she explodes. “Like— _ Tony-freaking-Stark  _ can’t figure out what’s wrong with Peter? And then he what— _ misplaces  _ his body? Isn’t that weird to you?”

Ned blinks at her, his brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—where did this alien thing come from? Maybe...maybe it was  _ planted  _ here for Peter to find,” Michelle says, starting to pace. “Like, for all we know maybe he’s not even really  _ dead— _ he could have been drugged, and we were all made to think he’s dead so they could take him, and maybe they’re experimenting on him right now, or—“

“Stop,” Ned says sharply, cutting her off. Michelle stops pacing, looking at him. He’s crying again, his face red.

“Just stop it,” he says, his voice breaking. “This isn’t some stupid conspiracy theory—this is  _ Peter.  _ I’ve been his best friend since the third grade, I  _ know  _ him...he’s dead, MJ. We saw him die. He was  _ gone.” _

Michelle stares at him, her vision suddenly swimming with tears. She can feel her lip trembling uncontrollably, overwhelmed with a sense of unfairness. The universe had already stolen so much from her when it took Gayle, and it feels unbearably cruel that she should have to feel another loss like this in her young life.

“I know. I know that,” she says, tears spilling over. “But he was my friend, too. I cared about him, too. And I don’t want him to be gone.”

Ned says nothing, his own face streaked with tears and his breath coming in little hiccups. Then he walks over to Michelle, throwing his arms around her and holding her tight.

She hugs him back, clinging to him, more tears running down her cheeks and dripping off her chin onto his shoulder as they stand alone in her living room, holding each other up.

* * *

The next week passes in a fog.

Michelle feels like she’s living another person’s life—someone who didn’t just watch their friend die, someone whose biggest worry is passing her calculus test and getting to the bus stop on time, someone who isn’t wondering where her dead friend’s corpse has gone. She drifts from class to class like an unmoored boat caught in a current.

The only time she feels like she’s her real self is when she’s with Ned. They spend hours together after school, trying to figure out what happened to Peter. The mystery of Peter’s missing body becomes something like an obsession to her, and Ned is the only person who can share the burden with her.

There still hasn’t been a funeral—Michelle lies awake at night thinking about Peter’s aunt, imagining herself in that same situation with her sister. She wonders how anyone could be strong enough to hold themselves together after everything that’s happened to May. It wasn’t fair.

And when she does sleep, she’s visited by the memories of Peter’s final moments—the blood pouring out of his nose and mouth, the awful wet gasping of his last breaths, the shrill beeping of various alarms and machines, the sound of her pulse rushing in her ears as she had stood pressed to the wall, terrified. She wakes up crying and nauseated, sick with grief and lingering horror that gradually transforms into an anger that fuels her determination to figure out where Peter has gone.

“Your mom hasn’t heard anything from Peter’s aunt?” Michelle asks Ned one afternoon as she lounges across her bed and aimlessly cycles through the social media apps on her phone, trying not to lose her mind every time she stumbles across a photo or video of Peter.

“Nope. Nothing,” Ned replies, shrugging. He’s sitting at her desk, attempting to do calculus homework, but Michelle’s been watching him do nothing but stare into space and anxiously tap his pencil against his textbook for nearly an hour. She gets it, though, and doesn’t call him out. She knows he’s torn between a desperate need to know what happened to Peter and a deep discomfort with discussing morbid theories with her. She keeps her wilder ideas bottled up inside her head to spare him.

She sighs, opening up Reddit. She scrolls without really reading anything, her thoughts preoccupied, and then something jumps out to her.

It’s a picture posted to the NUMTOT subreddit she’s subscribed to, taken in an abandoned subway tunnel by someone with the username  _ urbanexplorer1212. _

A picture of what looks like a massive spider web stretched across the tunnels walls.

“Dude,” Michelle says, sitting up. “Look at this.”

Ned takes the phone from her, frowning down at the screen. He gives a jerky little shrug as he hands the phone back. “Yeah, creepy.”

Michelle raises her eyebrows at him. “Creepy? That’s it? Our friend _ —Spider-Man— _ disappears, and a week later a big ass spider web that looks like it’s been made by a big ass spider appears in the subway? Isn’t that kinda a weird coincidence to you?”

Ned shrugs again, an irritated expression on his face now. “Yeah, exactly _ —coincidence.  _ It’s probably viral marketing for some dumb horror movie. I mean,  _ urbanexplorer1212?  _ Sounds like the basic username a thirty-year-old underpaid drone in some marketing company would come up with. Or someone playing a prank. I mean, what are you even suggesting here? That Peter’s dead body walked off and is like...running around in the tunnels like...like a zombie-Spider-Man?”

“Well, yeah, it sounds dumb when you put it like that,” Michelle says flatly, “but getting superpowers from a spider bite sounds pretty implausible, too, and yet it happened. All I’m saying is, maybe...that alien thing did something to Peter. Maybe—“

Ned cuts her off before she can delve once more into another wild theory.

“MJ, let it go. You gotta let it go,” he says gently. “You’re gonna make yourself crazy. I agree that there’s obviously something  _ really _ fucked up going on, but giant spider webs in the subway...sometimes things really are  _ just  _ coincidence.”

Michelle clenches her jaw, but then retreats.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she mutters. Sometimes she feels alone even when she’s with Ned.

She attempts to catch up on some of her own homework after he leaves, but her attention keeps wandering. Eventually, she gives up, collapsing back onto her bed and lying there face down until she falls into a restless sleep.

Michelle is awoken sometime later by the sound of her phone buzzing on her bedside table. She lifts her head, blinking groggily and she reaches for it. She frowns at the screen, where there’s a text from Ned:

_ I’m at your door, let me in _

Michelle’s frown deepens, but she gets out of bed and creeps down the hall to the door, opening it. Ned’s standing on the other side, his face pale and his eyes enormous.

“Dude,” he says as he walks inside, holding his phone up and shoving it towards her face. “You gotta watch this.”

Michelle takes the phone from him. A video posted to Flash’s SpideyWatch Twitter account is displayed on the screen. Michelle looks at Ned, raising an eyebrow.

Ned makes an impatient noise. “I know, it’s Flash, but just watch it, okay?”

“Okay, okay,” Michelle agrees, playing the video.

Flash appears on camera, his face lit from underneath with a flashlight.

“What’s up, SpideyWatch fans, it’s your boy Flash here coming to you from the underground _ —literally. _ I’m in an abandoned subway tunnel tonight on the hunt for a different kind of Spidey—the one folks around here are calling the Midtown Man-Spider, _ ”  _ he says, flipping the camera view around to show the sooty walls of an old subway tunnel. 

“The Midtown Man-Spider?” Michelle mutters.

Ned shushes her. “Just watch.”

“You heard me right—on this special edition of SpideyWatch, I’m on a mission to get real video evidence of the mysterious Man-Spider, or die trying,” Flash continues dramatically as he walks deeper into the tunnel. “That’s my level of dedication to—oh shit, oh shit, look at this!”

The camera shakily pans across the subway tunnel wall, where silvery spider webs glitter in the beam of the flashlight. The thick webbing is dotted in places with little wrapped bundles. The camera zooms in on one. Flash’s hand comes into view, tugging at the webbing to loosen it and revealing matted brown fur.

“Holy fucking shit, that’s a  _ rat,”  _ Flash whispers. “Are you guys seeing this? Yo, it’s eating rats, it’s— _ what the fuck is that?” _

The camera spins around nauseatingly fast. Flash’s heavy, panicked breathing is audible as the beam of the flashlight darts back and forth, but under his panting another sound can be heard—a creaking, clicking sound.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, what is that?” Flash whispers, the camera jerking erratically as he spins around again.

The clicking noise is louder now. The camera slowly pans upwards towards the ceiling of the tunnel. Something massive and vaguely humanoid in shape skitters across the beam of the flashlight, providing a split-second view of gleaming, curved mandibles and rows of glittering inhuman eyes before Flash screams and the video abruptly cuts off.

Michelle lifts her head to look at Ned, stunned.

“That’s Peter,” they both say at the same time.

**Author's Note:**

> We love it when people scream at us in the comments. Come hang out with gruoch on tumblr: [gruoch](https://groo-ock.tumblr.com)


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